


Ineffable adoption

by Big_ball_of_anxiety_and_cake



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Accidential adoption, Adoption, Anathema is a queen amongst mothers, Angst, Crowley and Aziraphale are clueless, Domestic Fluff, Fluff, God Ships Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens), God being ineffable, How Do I Tag, I Am Not British, I don't understand how English commas work, I don´t know shit about the bible, Ineffable Husbands (Good Omens), M/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, WHERE DID ALL THE ANGST COME FROM?, actually beta read, author is not a parent and has no idea how parenting works, i wrote the first chapter instead of sleeping, it was supposed to be 90 percent fluff, later angst, more research than necessary went into this, questionable interpretations of religious lore, the plot kinda snuck up on me
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-23
Updated: 2020-12-24
Packaged: 2021-03-08 19:53:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 17
Words: 24,313
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27162094
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Big_ball_of_anxiety_and_cake/pseuds/Big_ball_of_anxiety_and_cake
Summary: "Angel, what´s going on?"Well, that was actually a really good question. If he was being honest, Aziraphale had no idea.He looked up."I think I´ve just accidentally adopted a child."
Relationships: Aziraphale & Crowley & Original Child(ren) of Aziraphale and Crowley (Good Omens), Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 27
Kudos: 57





	1. An unexpected visitor

This whole mess started on a rainy night.

The wind was howling outside and rain was slamming against the windows, but the inside of the book shop was cozy and warm. Aziraphale was just making another cup of cocoa with cream and sprinkles for himself, getting ready for finishing his current book, when someone knocked on the door.

“Who could that be? It’s the middle of the night”, he wondered aloud, but went to open it nonetheless.

Heaven and hell hadn’t bothered the two of them in a while, so they had gotten less cautious. In the beginning, both of them had constantly been looking over their shoulders, just waiting for their side to make another move. Crowley had been having horrible nightmares almost every night and would frantically call Aziraphale each time to make sure he was okay. Then he had moved into the flat above the book shop too and after waking up to Aziraphale sleeping next to him every night, the nightmares had quieted down. Heaven and hell hadn’t bothered them in over a year now. Still Aziraphale’s hands were sweating when he unlocked the door.  
Would that temporary peace end tonight? Was Gabriel just waiting for him on the other side of this door?

In the end he needn’t have worried. It was neither an angel nor a demon standing outside. Instead it was a mortal woman, maybe thirty years old. She looked painfully thin and was completely drenched from the rain and shivering miserably. In her arms was a bundle of blankets that she clutched protectively.

“Oh, my dear! You’re absolutely soaked!”, Aziraphale exclaimed and quickly moved to the side to allow her in. “Come on in, we’ll have you warm and dry in no time.”

But the woman did not come in. She stayed outside woth the rain pouring down on her, shaking her head frantically.

“No, please, you don’t understand. I need your help! I need you to do something for me!”

Her lips were nearly blue from the cold and her pleading eyes were rimmed with red. Aziraphale’s heart, that had always been soft as butter, melted even further.

“Of course, my dear. I’ll help you any way I can. Are you sure you don’t want to come in? I could make the both of us a nice cup of tea?”

She only shook her head again.

“No, thank you. I just need you to...”

She cut herself off as if she couldn’t quite bring herself to say it and turned her face up into the rain. Aziraphale couldn’t tell if the liquid shining in her eyes were tears or rain. She looked so desperate. So broken. So sad.

She was swaying on her feet but still refused to come in. Her arms were shaking as if even the tiny baby’s weight was too much for her. Aziraphale couldn’t stand watching it. He had to help somehow. Even if just by providing relief for her tired arms for just a moment.

“Do you want me to take the baby?”, he offered and was met with an unexpected reaction.

The woman immediately burst into tears and thrust the baby forward into his hands which he took as a yes. He carefully cradled the child in his arms and the woman started outright sobbing.

“Take good care of it”, she choked out.

Aziraphale was confused and was about to say that “yes, he knew how to hold a baby, he was only taking it for a moment after all and he wouldn’t drop it, so there was nothing to worry about” when she abruptly turned on her heel and staggered of into the rain again.

“Err...excuse me?”, he yelled after her. “You’ve forgot your baby!”

But the woman didn’t turn back. He was too stunned to run after her and after only a few moments, she was gone. The darkness had swallowed her once again.

Aziraphale looked back down at the child in his arms. What was he supposed to do know? Find the mother again? Why had she even left it behind? What had she wanted in the first place? He went back over their conversation in his head and then it clicked.

“Do you want me to take the baby?”, he’d said.

Oh.

“Who was that then?”, came Crowley’s voice from the top of the stairs.

Aziraphale turned towards him but was still to shocked to say something. When Crowley had reached the bottom of the stairs and saw his husband’s face as well as the bundle of blankets in his arms, his voice took on a worried tone.

"Angel, what‘s going on?"

Well, that actually was a really good question. If he was being honest, Aziraphale had no idea. 

He looked up.

"I think I‘ve just accidentally adopted a child."

Stunned silence. Crowley’s (in Aziraphale’s opinion absolutely beautiful) yellow snake eyes seemed to widen to an almost comical degree.

“You did what?!”

Aziraphale shushed him.

“You’ll wake it, dear. And then it will start crying and want food or water or something. I don’t know how to care for a baby at all! This was all just a terrible misunderstanding but the mother is gone now and I don’t know how to...”

Aziraphale’s voice had been getting increasingly more desperate and now it was Crowley’s time to shush him.

“Hey, angel. It’s okay. We’ll figure something out. Also, I think you’d make a lovely parent.”

He smiled softly at his husband and Aziraphale’s heart swelled with love. How had he ever found such a loving and kind (but never call him nice) demon? He smiled back and for just a moment everything was perfect.

Then the child began to cry and the moment was gone.

Crowley ran a hand through his messy red hair and sighed.

“Right, we better figure this out.”


	2. How to care for a child

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had this idea in the middle of the night and in the next morning I wasn´t actually sure if I would ever write it because I´m bad both at fluff and long stories.  
> My sister convinced me to at least start writing (Thanks for that, you're amazing) but I still wasn't sure.  
> Then I sent the first few chapters to a friend of mine and she convinced me to post this and is now betaing the story. I never had a beta before but I like it so far.
> 
> Thanks, you´re great.

Figuring this out was easier said than done.

None of them had any idea how babies worked. They were angels (and demons) after all. They had never been children. God had created them fully formed and they had been middle-aged from day one. Maybe this wasn´t the best starting point but they were optimistic. Human babies couldn´t be that different from adult humans, could they? How hard could this be?

They miracle their living room full of baby toys and sleeping cribs and all the other stuff they thought babies might need. Their kitchen was fully stocked with baby food now and they felt quite well prepared.

The child was still crying so they set out to figure out why.

They offered it food but it didn´t seem hungry.

They sang lullabies so it would fall back asleep but it didn´t appear to be tired either.

What else did a baby need?

Only after a few minutes did they realise that they had forgotten the diapers, but it was nothing a quick miracle couldn´t fix. After being changed, the baby finally stopped screaming and fell back asleep. Unfortunately it was still clutching Aziraphale´s jacket and wouldn´t let go. Too scared that it might start screaming again, the angel simply took of the jacket and put it in the crib together with the baby.

“How do human parents do this?”, he asked Crowley. “How do they get what they need without miracling it?”

“Well, humans don´t usually get a baby handed to them in the middle of the night. Pregnancy gives them a lot of time to prepare but beyond that I have no idea.”

That gave Aziraphale an idea. “Hey, I know what to do! We should simply ask Anathema. She has a child, right? She will know?”

Crowley scratched his head. “Book girl? Yeah, she has that little devil named Finn. He must be a little over a year old now, so she will have plenty of experience. Calling her can´t hurt.”

So they did. The only thing they forgot was that it was still the middle of the night. Angels and demons don´t sleep unless they want to, so being woken up by a call around midnight is annoying but nothing more. They don´t get tired. 

Anathema still answered after the second ring.

“Anathema Pulsifer, who is this?”, she asked and then yawned loudly.

“Yes, hello, my dear”, said Aziraphale.

“Oh, it´s you. I should have guessed. You´re really the only one who would call in the middle of the night.”

“I´m terribly sorry but it´s an emergency. Did I wake you up?”

“Nah, it´s fine. Finn has been keeping me up all night anyway.”

There was a short pause. Then she suddenly sounded much more serious.

“What do you mean by emergency? Is it the angels? The demons?”

Aziraphale was quick to reassure here.

“No, no. Nothing of that sort, dear. It´s just that we…seem to have acquired a child?”

There was silence on the other end of the line. Aziraphale almost thought that he had accidentally hung up again (he wasn´t that good with technology) when Anathema spoke again.

“What do you mean `acquired a child`?”

“Well, it all started tonight. It was pouring outside and I was just making myself another cup of cocoa because I like to read in the evenings and it´s been getting colder lately and…”

“What he´s trying to say is, a woman knocked and gave it to us”, Crowley interrupted him. “We have no idea where she is now and we hoped you might tell us a bit about caring for babies until we find her.”

There was silence again. Then Anathema burst out laughing. It took over a minute for her to calm down to the point where she could speak again.

“So, you´re telling me that you accidentally adopted a child?”, she choked out between giggles.

“We didn´t adopt it! We´re caring for it until we find the mother! I´m no parent, I´m a demon!”

“Yeah, right. Don´t you think it´s weird that the mother just left it behind? She clearly doesn’t want it anymore and has chosen you to take care of it. We humans call that adopting. Don´t worry. The two of you will make lovely parents! Do you think you can handle it for one night? I´m really tired right now but I promise I´ll come by the bookshop tomorrow.”

After assuring her that yes, they could handle it, she bid them goodnight and hung up. Both Aziraphale and Crowley were just staring at the phone long after the conversation had ended. Both of them were stunned. It had been a wild night.

They had been married for a while now, but had never really thought about having children. Angels couldn´t give birth. All new angels had to be created by God herself. Neither of them had ever expected to become parents, so the idea took some getting used to.

Still, they had helped raise warlock before. Sure, it hadn´t been their child and he hadn´t exactly turned out to be a nice person, but they at least had some experience, right?

In the next room, the baby started crying again. Aziraphale looked at Crowley imploringly and the demon sighed.

“All right, I´ll take care of it. You go back to reading your book, angel.”

Aziraphale smiled his thanks but after Crowley left the room, he did not turn back to his book. He had a lot to think about now. Aziraphale had always liked children, at least the nice ones. He was sure that with them raising it, this baby would turn out to be the sweetest human to ever walk the earth.

Him and Crowley. Raising a child together.

It was unexpected but something about this idea made his heart swell with warmth. It felt right somehow. 

In the next room, Crowley was gently shushing their child and started to sing it a lullaby. The crying stopped almost immediately. Despite his fall, Crowley still had the voice of an angel.

Aziraphale smiled and continued reading, the sweet tones of his husbands singing drifting in gently from the other room.

The rain was still hammering against the windows outside but the bookshop was peaceful and happy once more.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Nice and constructive commentaries by internet people are always welcome.
> 
> (Yes, I also came up with this pun at 1am but I stand by it.)


	3. A crash-course in parenting

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anathema and Finn show up.

Anathema came by early the next morning and Crowley had to hold it together to not start crying in relief.

The baby had woken up a total of seven times that night. Once because it was hungry, three times because the rain outside was too loud, then his diaper had been full again and they still didn´t know what had happened the other three times.

Aziraphale had been this close to miracling the little one to just stay asleep, but he knew that taking a humans free will from them like that was wrong. So they tried this the human way.

They may not have needed sleep, but the constant crying was still exhausting. They couldn´t properly finish anything that they were doing until they were needed again. The worst thing was figuring out what the little one wanted. How many times per night could a child get hungry? Or was it simply too loud for the little one? Why wasn´t there manual for this sort of stuff?

Crowley had suggested consulting the internet multiple times but Aziraphale refused. He had been online exactly once in his extremely long life and had been disgusted by all the lies and misinformation that was being spread there. Crowley had attempted to explain that it was relatively easy to distinguish between truth and fakes but Aziraphale didn´t want to hear it. He would never trust anything from that vile place. It might be a fitting hobby for a demon, but no angel would ever venture into this pit of sin. No, consulting an actual mother was much better.

An eternity seemed to have passed until she finally came, but the angel was still sure to have made the right choice.

When Anathema asked them how their night had been, he insisted that it had been fine, really, caring for a child was no problem for a grown angel and demon. Crowley only groaned quietly at that and Anathema sent him a knowing smile.

She had also brought along her child Finn. Newton was at work right now (one that had nothing to do with computers) and she had been unable to get a babysitter, so the little one had come along. He had learned to walk recently and promptly wandered off into the shop. Aziraphale winced when he thought about all the precious books the child might destroy, but decided not to mention it. It was nothing a little miracle couldn´t fix. Anathema had been so kind to cancel all her occultist appointments for today and come here, so he wouldn´t dare tell her to control her child. Anathema had been working from home since Finn´s birth, but there had still been a steady stream of customers. People still liked witches, although Anathema was careful to not draw attention to herself by using too much real magic. The dark ages were long over, but people were still susceptible to forming a mob with pitchforks and torches when met with things they didn´t understand. They mostly did it through conspiracy theories these days instead of burning people, but one could never be too careful.

After Finn had disappeared, Crowley and Aziraphale showed her the child. It was awake right now and chewing on a toy they had brought for it. The diapers were clean and it was wearing fresh little clothes. They were quite proud of themselves for organising everything so quickly, but Anathema had quite a lot to say about what they had.

Apparently the bed was too small, the diapers too big and all the toys were full of harmful chemical colours. They were quite shocked to find out how much there was to consider when shopping for babies. In the end, they had to replace almost everything they had miracle at first.

Then Anathema showed them how to change a child properly, how to tell if it was hungry or just needed a little attention and also introduced them to the magical items known as teddy bears and a thing called pacifier that the baby would suck on. That apparently helped them fall asleep.

Another big topic was how often and what to feed them. Did one little human really need that much food? Why were vitamins so important and sugar so dangerous? Aziraphale loved sugar!

“You´re not human but the child is”, Anathema had to remind them multiple times. 

She was right. Despite living amongst them for millennia, they knew almost nothing about human needs and biology. It seemed quite complicated and time consuming. Aziraphale couldn´t wait for the day, the child would learn how to talk and do things on his own. How long did that take? Judging by Finn´s progress a few years at least. Or maybe Finn was just slow? How long had it taken warlock? They had waited the first few years until taking over the little one’s education. Tiny humans couldn´t make long-term memories anyway, so there had been no point. Now Aziraphale wished that he had been there. It would´ve prepared him for this.

When Anathema was finally satisfied with their progress, it was already getting dark outside. Their whole house had been baby-proofed, so they wouldn´t forget it when the baby learned to walk. During the day Anathema had interrupted their lessons to take care of Finn multiple times, so they had a rough estimate of how often they needed to do things now.

Finn had mostly behaved and only pulled a few books out of their places on the shelves. Nothing had been damaged and Aziraphale wouldn´t even have needed a miracle to fix it. He used one anyway. Quiet time had to be enjoyed when there was a baby in the house. You never knew when it would end.

Not that taking care of it hadn´t been fun. It was exhausting sometimes but the little one was simply too adorable to stay mad. It was about three months old by Anathema´s estimate and couldn´t really talk or move around on its own yet. But once in a while it would smile and those smiles would melt Aziraphale´s heart. Its soul was still so pure, so untainted. He would make sure that it would stay like that.

They bid Anathema and Finn goodbye and after a few last-minute tips, she was gone.

“Well, that was nice, wasn´t it?”, said Aziraphale.

Crowley shrugged in response. “I still don´t know what I´m doing but now I at least know what I don´t know how to do. We´ll figure it out from here.”

Aziraphale laughed and they went back inside holding hands. The baby was sleeping soundly in its new and more comfortable crib. Anathema had warned them that it might still wake them up a few times at night but it should be better now. Pacifiers apparently did wonders for any child.

This still wasn´t going to be easy but Aziraphale was optimistic.

They could do this. Together.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 4 is already written and is currently being proof-read. It will probably be up this evening or tomorrow.
> 
> How did you like it so far?


	4. Sorting things out

The days went by and slowly things got better.

The baby would still wake up crying now and again, but it got considerably less and they got better at dealing with it. They would just know what it wanted without needing to check. You really started to get a feeling for it after a while. It didn’t work every time but it still made things easier.

They both found that they liked caring for a child but they still kept looking for the mother. She might not have wanted the child, but it felt wrong to just keep it. What if she changed her mind? She also hadn’t looked good when she first came to their doorstep. What if she needed help?

Despite their best efforts their search went fruitless. They didn´t even know where to start. Aziraphale hadn’t gotten a good look at her, so they knew almost nothing except that she had given birth about three month ago. While that did narrow it down a bit, there were still over a thousand possible candidates in London alone. They could have just gone to every hospital and asked for a list of names but what if she was from outside London or had not given birth in a hospital? It was rare but possible. Besides, there were simply too many names to check each one. They still had the baby to care for!

They filed a report at the police station, but beyond that there was nothing they could do. So they just took good care of the child. It had been a bit thin when it had first come to them but was now quickly gaining weight.

Since it was increasingly looking like the mother would never be found, they agreed to keep it unless something changed. It felt wrong somehow, to keep referring to him as “the baby”, so they decided to name the little boy Henry.

Henry had just somehow felt right. Aziraphale couldn’t really explain it but whenever he looked at the child, a name had echoed in his mind. It had not been Henry, he couldn’t tell exactly what it had been, but it was something similar. Was this normal? He didn’t really know enough about normal to tell. Maybe it was just ordinary paternal instincts. Or maybe something else? But what could it be? This child was only human after all.

The child slowly began to learn more things. His new favourite hobby became pushing things to the floor and then laughing in delight when they got it back up for him every time. His two dads had wildly different reactions to this. Crowley would just laugh each time, call him his “little demon” and then go of to distract Henry with a new game when he got bored of picking things back up. Aziraphale on the other hand would try to make him understand that he couldn´t do this forever. Maybe someone should have told him that now was a bit too early to educate the boy on morality but they both seemed to enjoy it. Aziraphale would explain things to him in Enochian, the first language there was that every living creature understood, and Henry would listen in awe. While he could understand what Aziraphale was saying, he wouldn´t remember it for his later life yet. Long term memory was still developing. 

It also had the side effect that when the little boy finally started to speak, he used both English and Enochian words. When Crowley first noticed it happening, he was shocked but Aziraphale quickly explained things to him. It looked like their little human would grow up as bilingual. While Enochian wasn´t exactly a common human language, they saw no harm in it either and continued to teach him both. Being able to explain yourself to animals, even if you couldn´t understand their answer, might even be useful at some point.

Time went by and our little family was happy.

After only six months, Henry began to walk around the bookshop without help. On more than one occasion, Aziraphale found him chewing on an unbelievably rare and precious first edition and panicked so much that he even turned into his true form in the middle of the shop once. Luckily there were no customers and Henry didn´t seem alarmed. He was still to young to understand. What Aziraphale didn´t know was that this had actually happened way more often than he noticed. Whenever Crowley would find Henry touching Aziraphale´s beloved books, he would simply miracle everything back into place and took the little devil up into the flat with him. Aziraphale never noticed beyond the fact that the condition of some of his books on the lower shelves seemed to increase without him ever performing a miracle on them.

Henry loved his two dads and always referred to Aziraphale as “lorslq” which was the Enochian word for flower and had been used so much in his moral analogies that the little one had apparently begun to think it was the angel´s name. Crowley on the other hand was “bestad” because he always used to say “Who´s the best dad?” when playing with him. It was really quite adorable.

Soon Henry would be with them for almost half a year, making him around nine months old in total. The mother still was nowhere to be found, but to be honest, the two had stopped looking. The liked Henry. They liked having children together and caring for them together. Henry loved bestad and lorslq and they loved Henry.

They were a happy family of three.

Until the day there was another knock on their door. It was not night this time, but the middle of the day, so Aziraphale thought nothing of it. It was probably a customer who could not take the hint that the door might be locked despite the open sign for a reason. Aziraphale sighed and went to open the door, already mentally preparing himself for fighting of an annoying human who wanted to take his precious books from him.

But it wasn´t a human. Instead it was someone Aziraphale had hoped never to see before.

“Hello, Aziraphale”, said Gabriel. “We´ve come about the child.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, looks like the plot is actually going to start now.
> 
> Next chapter is coming soon.


	5. Unwelcome visitors

Aziraphale’s first reaction was to slam the door shut again and lock it.

That wouldn’t solve anything in the long run, but it still felt good to slam a door in their faces.

“They” being the archangel Gabriel and the Lord of hell Beelzebub. Their former superiors who had left them alone ever since that catastrophic (or hilarious in their own opinion) trial.

Aziraphale had thought they had finally gotten rid of them for good and now they were standing on their front porch and talking about a child. What child? They surely didn’t mean Henry, he was only human and of no interest to heaven or hell. Maybe Adam? He was surely of interest but why now? He hadn’t done anything that Aziraphale knew of over the past few weeks. There was nothing that could have tipped Gabriel and Beelzebub of that he had retained some of his supernatural powers.

Well, they were here now and he had no idea why. The easiest solution was to just ask, no matter how much he hated it.

He should probably open the door before they just miracled themselves inside.

When he opened the door again, they were still there.

“Hello, Gabriel”, he said and tried to smile politely. It came out as more of a grimace. “I´m afraid I don´t know what you´re talking about.”

Gabriel was not impressed.

“Don´t play dumb with us, Aziraphale. We´ve been tracking the boy for almost a year now. We know he´s here.” Then he smiled back in the most ungenuine way possible. Angels. They´ll smile even while telling you to just die already.

Well, they weren´t talking about Adam then. There was really only one child that was about a year old and currently living with them. Henry. But he was only human.

“Let us suppose for a moment that there was a child. Of what interest would it be to you?”

“All zzzelestial hybridzzz must be reported to the head offizzes of heaven and hell. We have to determine if he izzz dangerouzz”, said Beelzebub and swatted a fly away from their face. Since the Lord of hell was constantly being swarmed by flies, this had little to no effect.

“Celestial hybrid?”, Aziraphale whispered in disbelief. He was so confused right now. They couldn´t possibly be talking about Henry and yet there was no one else they could possibly be talking about. But Henry was human, wasn´t he?

Well, actually they wouldn´t know. He had been handed to them by a desperate mother when he was three months old. They didn´t know who his father had been. They didn´t even know who his mother had been. She had seemed human when he met her, but first impressions could be wrong.

He still thought it was the father. Crying and stumbling through the rain was not something most celestials would degrade themselves to do. It could have been a trick to invoke his sympathy, but it hadn´t felt like one. Her desperation had seemed genuine. The father on the other hand was a very real possibility. Maybe that´s why she had seemed so desperate? Had she tried to hide the child from him? If she had found out who her lover really was, she might have gotten scared. Most humans don´t cope well when dealing with the supernatural.

“Hello? Heaven to Aziraphale?”, asked Gabriel and started snapping his fingers in front of Aziraphale´s face because the angel had taken too long to answer. It was really quite rude and if Aziraphale hadn´t been too polite to do so, he would probably have told him as much.

“Yes, terribly sorry. I´m afraid I still don´t know what you´re talking about. The only child in here was the son of a friend of mine who has sadly passed. I assure you that both parents were perfectly normal humans.”

Lying was also a sin, but in this specific case Aziraphale thought it could be forgiven.

Beelzebub frowned. “Our zzzensorzzz are telling uzz the hybrid izz in thizz building.”

“Well, then your sensors must be mistaken. A good day to you”, Aziraphale answered and quickly tried to close the door again. This time however, Gabriel was prepared and caught it before he could pull it closed.

“Listen, Aziraphale”, he said with that terrible fake smile of his. “We know the child is in there, so be a good angel and hand him over.”

In this moment, Aziraphale really hated Gabriel. How dare he call him a good little angel?! How dare he try to take those he loved from him?! For once, Aziraphale didn´t care how polite he was being and openly glared at his former superior. His voice was icy when he spoke again.

“I´m not an angel anymore. I think that became quite clear when you tried to execute me last time. Now get out of my home and leave me and my family alone or I swear to the Almighty herself that we´ll give you a war that you can´t possibly win.”

Aziraphale was bluffing of course, but Gabriel and Beelzebub didn´t know that. They really thought that the rogue angel had somehow become immune to hellfire and had possibly gained even more abilities in the process. After a moment of consideration, Gabriel let go of the door and stepped back.

Aziraphale gave him a smile that didn´t even try to appear polite.

“Goodbye”, he said coldly and slammed the door in their faces once more. When he looked out the window a few seconds later, they were both gone.

Aziraphale took a deep breath. He felt almost giddy. He had finally managed to stand up to Gabriel! The archangel had almost seemed afraid of him and it had actually felt good. Aziraphale smiled again and this time it was genuine.

Then reality crashed over him again and the smile slipped of his lips as quickly as it had appeared. He groaned quietly. That had been a terrible idea! What had he been thinking?! Threatening war to both heaven and hell?! What if they saw through his bluff?!

Aziraphale hurried to the window, convinced that the forces of heaven were already waiting for him outside, but beyond the usual Londoner bustle, the streets were still empty. After a few minutes of waiting, nothing had changed and Aziraphale allowed himself to relax. It looked like they had actually bought it.

The only problem left now was why in heaven they had been here in the first place.

Henry came crawling in from the next room and Aziraphale lifted him up into his arms. Henry gurgled happily, but even the child´s joy could not make the worried crease in his forehead disappear.

What had they meant by hybrid child?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks again to my sister and my lovely beta for reassuring me that this isn't the most horrible story ever written.  
> I´m still not quite satisfied with this chapter though. It feels slightly out of character but I don´t know how to make it better.
> 
> The next updates will probably come a bit slower now because I won't have as much time. I'll try to update once a week.


	6. The holy water test

Crowley came home relatively late that evening. He had driven to a reptile pet shop outside of London. They apparently sold really great snake food and Crowley, being a snake and all that, decided to try this new restaurant. He was disappointed. If this was considered gourmet food for pet snakes, he didn’t want to try the normal stuff. He should definitively start a revolution among pet snakes and free them all. For purely diabolical reasons of course. Imagine all the chaos they would cause!

Aziraphale on the other hand had been toying with the idea of calling Crowley all day, but had ultimately decided against it. Gabriel and Beelzebub could not be trusted. They had most likely been lying and Aziraphale did not want to worry his husband needlessly.

The problem with this was that Aziraphale was really terrible at hiding things. Crowley came in, kissed him hello, started ranting about snake revolutions and stopped halfway through a sentence when he noticed the angel´s face. 

Then he immediately stopped what he was doing and took his husband´s hands in his.

“Angel, what´s wrong?”

Aziraphale quickly tried to banish the frown from his face with mediocre results and smiled.

“Nothing, dear. Everything is tickety-boo!”

Crowley said nothing and simply gave him his patented I’m-not-stupid-now-talk-to-me-so-I-can-help-look. He had to use that one more than he would like because heaven wasn’t exactly great with discussing emotions openly. Neither was hell really, but they were at least ready to admit that feelings existed, even if only to use them against someone. Crowley had perfected this look quite quickly and threw in a smidge of hearty eyes. Aziraphale would never be able to resist that look and they both knew it. The mixture of unconditional love and slight annoyance was quite potent.

Aziraphale sighed and gave in immediately. No point in fighting a battle that was already lost.

“Alright, something happened. Gabriel and Beelzebub came by the shop today.”

“THEY WHAT? Oh my someone, are you okay? I swear that if they hurt you in any way I will personally…”

What followed was a quite detailed description of just how exactly Crowley would take his revenge. It was very colourful but slightly out of touch with the laws of physics and the demon’s personal strength compared to the archangel and Beelzebub. Aziraphale tried to get his husband´s attention multiple times during his rant but Crowley seemed to have been planning this for a while now and had a lot to say. Aziraphale made a note to find him some more healthy daydreams and then took his opportunity when the demons stopped for breath.

“Crowley, as nice as that is of you, I’m completely fine. They were only here to talk. It´s just what they were talking about that worries me.”

“Are they going to attack us again?”

“No, I don’t think so. They still seemed quite wary of me. It was actually pretty funny. No, they wanted to talk about Henry.”

“Henry?”, asked Crowley and immediately reached out to scoop the toddler in question from where he had been playing on the floor and held him in his arms protectively. He didn’t even seem to notice he was doing it. It was adorable. “What would the forces of heaven and hell want with a human child?”

“That’s just it, dear. They seemed to think he wasn’t human. They called him a hybrid child.”

“And they really meant him?”

“They seemed quite certain, yes.”

“And you believed them?”

“Well, no. Not exactly. It just…made me worry a bit.”

They both looked down at Henry who was gurgling happily at his two dads. Then Crowley nodded.

“Okay, then we´ll check.”

Crowley got up, set Henry down on the floor and fetched a bowl full of water from the kitchen. Aziraphale was confused.

“Err…Crowley? What are you doing?”

“Checking, obviously. Now you only need to bless it.”

“Bless what? The water? Honey, we can’t just make holy water in our flat. You´re a demon!”

“Yeah, don`t worry! I´ll be careful. But this way, we´ll know for certain that they lied and you can sleep easily.”

“You want to dunk our child in holy water to see if he´s supernatural?!”

“Well, yeah. If anything, his celestial parent would be a demon, wouldn´t it? Most angels would never even consider sex, but demons have it all the time. Usually not with humans though and they don´t produce offspring. But maybe one did. It´s really the only possibility that even vaguely makes sense and it´s still virtually impossible. So, we dunk him in holy water and then we´ll know that he has no demonic parent.”

“Are you insane?! If, for whatever reason, his father is a demon, he´ll die!”

Crowley raised his hands placatively. 

“Okay, okay, fine! We´ll be careful, even if I don´t think anything will happen. We can just drop a lock of his hair into the water. It would still be part of a “demonic being” but it can´t harm him in any way. Sound good?”

Aziraphale still thought this was a terrible idea but he found nothing else to criticise, so he nodded reluctantly.

“Step back at least. This could kill you.”

After Crowley had moved to the other side of the room, Aziraphale cast a quick blessing on the water and cut a tiny lock of Henry´s golden-blond hair. He held it over the water and even if he truly believed that nothing would happen, he felt really nervous. What if something happened? What if Henry was truly half demon? Such a being was unheard of. No one could tell how the mixed blood would affect the child. Aziraphale quickly shook his head and willed those thoughts away. There was no need to worry. Henry was human.

He dropped the lock.

Crowley sighed. “Right, nothing happened. Just get rid of all that holy water and then we can…”

“Crowley”, Aziraphale interrupted him. “Look.”

The lock had not, as it would have if it had belonged to a demon, immediately caught fire or dissolved when it touched the surface. It was still very clearly there, but it was...glowing? A swirl of golden light surrounded the baby´s hair. Almost as if the holiness in the water was unsure of whether or not there was something to purify. Aziraphale had never seen anything like this before.

He looked up and saw his own surprise and confusion reflected in Crowley´s eyes.

“What does this mean?”

“I don´t know. He doesn´t seem to be half demon and holy water wouldn’t react to a half-angel this way either. But one thing is for sure. He isn´t entirely human either.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeyyy, I updated! New chapters will probably be coming at least once a week now, most likely during the weekends.


	7. Emergency meeting

Neither of them was actually sure what to do with this revelation. They had never heard of something like a “celestial hybrid” before, but the fact that Beelzebub and Gabriel had known about it and even said that “all celestial hybrids must be reported to the head offices”, implied that there had been hybrids before. Hybrids that ordinary demons and angels like Aziraphale and Crowley had never heard about. So what had happened to them?

The easiest answer was heaven and hell, of course. If they saw the hybrids as any kind of threat, they had more than enough power to simply make them disappear. But why would they do that? Heaven had more than enough reasons to try and keep any kind of relationship between angels and a human under wraps, but hell? Tempting humans and angels alike into sinful behaviour was exactly what they did! They should´ve been proud of any human who had been tainted by a demon and any angel who had fallen from grace just like them. So why didn´t hell ever talk about hybrids?

There was, of course, another potential reason for them to keep this quiet. The hybrids might be dangerous. Neither Crowley nor Aziraphale could even guess what kind of effect their origins might have on the children. They might be nearly completely human, or they might have inherited some of their other parent´s power. A supernatural entity that didn´t have to answer to heaven or hell whose powers couldn´t be controlled by either one, was always dangerous. They should know. They were exactly that after all.

That was what made it even more curious that they had come to their home in the first place. Heaven and hell still didn´t know how their supposed independency affected Crowley and Aziraphale´s powers and had thus decided to keep a healthy distance from them. Until Henry. So Henry had to be more than that. The risk he would pose in the future seemed to outweigh the risk the two of them posed right now. Whatever Henry was exactly, heaven and hell had to think it was incredibly dangerous.

That was hard to believe for the both of them. Henry wasn´t dangerous! He was just a little child. One of the sweetest they had ever known (which wasn´t exactly many but still). Yet the possibility was there. It was almost a certainty, in fact. At some point in the future, Henry would become dangerous. Dangerous to who? Heaven and hell at the very least, but it might be more than that. Neither one of their sides cared much about the earth, but what if the power of a celestial hybrid would threaten creation itself? Even they couldn´t ignore that.

As much as they wanted to just ignore what they had discovered and move on, they knew they couldn´t. Heaven and hell might just be misjudging people like they had with Adam, but if they were right, the outcome would be catastrophic. They had to know for certain.

But how to know for certain? They couldn´t exactly just research stuff that the two oldest beings on earth had never heard of on the internet. Not that Aziraphale was willing to use it either way. There were no books to look at, no people to ask. They had nothing.

So they did what they had always done in the last few months when they didn´t know what to do.

They called Anathema.

She picked up and was about to launch into another explanation that “yes, that much chocolate isn´t good for a child. Yes, I know he likes it and you eat that much too, but he´s a child and he´s human, so please don´t give him chocolate cake only as dinner”, but judging by the way there was no intense arguing over the nutritional value of cake on the other end of the line, this was about something else.

And yes, they had to have that conversation multiple times already.

“Please tell me nothing is on fire and the child is fine”, she sighed. For someone who had lived on this earth for thousands of years and could be considered the most adult adults ever, these two sure were absolutely hopeless at basic human biology.

“Nothing is on fire, dear, but Crowley was sort of planning to bathe Henry in potentially poisonous water.”

“Hey, that is absolutely not what happened! Well, actually it is, but it seemed really logical at the time!”

Anathema sighed again and rubbed a hand over her face. She could already feel the oncoming headache.

“Do I actually want to know what´s going on?”, she asked.

There was a brief silence at the other end and Aziraphale cleared his throat awkwardly.

“Well, we were rather hoping you could help us with our little...err…situation. Nothing big of course. We just have a short question and then we´ll leave you alone. Look at the time, it´s already quite late. Terribly sorry for disturbing you! We really hadn´t noticed…”

“Aziraphale”, Anathema interrupted him. “Don´t worry about it. I´m fine. I like helping you, so ask away.”

There was another brief period of silence and then the two celestial beings seemed to argue about something in hushed voices. In the end, it was Crowley who spoke to her again.

“Well, we were just wondering if you´ve ever heard of a celestial hybrid before. You know, read something in Agnes' book about something like that or something. Purely academical question of course. We were just…interested in the topic.”

Yeah, right. While Crowley was quite proficient in several academic fields, bible study and mythology wasn´t typically among them. It wouldn´t be odd to have such a question coming from Aziraphale, but Crowley? Very suspicious. There was, of course, the possibility that they had just been arguing over an obscure fact only they would know and now wanted her to prove one of them right, but she didn´t think that was it. They had been trying to not call her in the middle of the night anymore unless it was an emergency. They could just have forgotten, they didn´t need sleep after all, but it was still weird. Surely Aziraphale would have the books to look something like this up in, so why turn to Agnes? It just seemed out of place, and recently when they had called her, they had always talked about…

“What makes you think that Henry isn´t entirely human?”, she asked.

“What makes you think that we think that?”, Crowley immediately shot back.

She didn´t answer and only waited in silence for a few moments. She didn´t have to wait long.

Crowley sighed. “Okay, yeah. We do think that. Beelzebub and Gabriel showed up at the bookshop this afternoon.”

“THEY DID WHAT?”

“Yeah, my reaction exactly. Anyway, they wanted to take Henry -don´t worry, he´s fine- and they seemed to think he wasn´t human. So when I came back, we decided to test that by exposing him to holy water. That being the poisonous thing I wanted to bathe him in, but really, how should I have known?! Don´t look at me like that, I´m a very responsible parent!”

“I´m not looking at you, we´re talking over the phone.”

“I was talking to Aziraphale, but nevermind. Fact is, his hair did really weird glowy stuff when we put it into the water, so he definitely isn´t 100% human. We have no idea what that means, but we thought Agnes might. Please look it up?”

“You made holy water in the middle of your flat?”

“Yes.”

“The flat that you, a demon, live in.”

“I see your point, but yes.”

“Where is that holy water now?”

“We de-blessed it. Poured hotdog water into it. Immediately makes anything impure. Great stuff.”

“And you´re sure that worked?”

“90% sure, I´d say.”

“You are crazy.”

“That might be, but I´m still a very responsible parent, isn´t that right, angel?”

Before their conversation could dissolve into old-couple-bickering again, Anathema decided to quickly take her leave.

“Alright, guys. Thanks for calling me! I´ll see what I can find. Until then just make sure to keep Henry safe, I don´t think heaven and hell are through with him yet.”

“Okay, thanks! Bye, Anathema!”

She smiled briefly and moved to hang up, but not before hearing the first few sentences of the ensuing “fight” between the two husbands.

“I´m sorry, dear. I´m sure you´re perfectly responsible, but sometimes I hope you would show it a bit more.”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean, angel?”

“Well, you remember that one time with the sausage fight where you…”

Then the line clicked and there was only silence. This time her smile lasted longer. Lovesick idiots, the two of them. They might pretend to be cross with each other right now, but she knew it would all be forgiven and forgotten in the morning.

They simply loved each other too much.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know it's late, but I wrote this one yesterday and then totally forgot about it. Still uploading this week though.
> 
> Anyway, Anathema is there again and thanks to tumblr for giving weird ideas about hotdog water.  
> I don't even have tumblr.


	8. Sleepless nights

After Aziraphale had relented that “yes, dear, you are absolutely responsible and an amazing parent” and Crowley had admitted that the sausage fight had been “a moment of madness, but seriously that was fun and totally justified”, their little couple fight was already over again. They never had been able to stay seriously mad at each other. 

It was already late evening again and after a quick supper, partly because Henry actually needed the food and partly because Aziraphale just liked it, they all went to bed.

While they did still not technically need sleep, both of them had come to enjoy it. Crowley had always found it a useful way to pleasantly pass time and it was quite relaxing in the stressful journey of raising a kid, if frequently interrupted. Aziraphale had also quickly taken a liking to it but insisted on bringing mountains of pillows and snuggly blankets into their bed. Crowley made a point of protesting against this, but he actually didn’t mind. He secretly loved this new opportunity to cuddle.

Unfortunately, Aziraphale’s new hobby also introduced him to the agony of sleeplessness.

Crowley, ever the reptilian, had already fallen into a light doze, surrounded by the warmth of the blankets and his angel, but Aziraphale just couldn’t seem find the peace. Too many thoughts raced through his head and most of them were very not good indeed. He felt restless and it took every ounce of control he had to not wake up his beautiful demonic husband with his squirming.

Not that he had any success with that because it didn’t take long for Crowley to notice that his angelic pillow was definitely not asleep. His heartrate was still way too fast. Not that he fell asleep to his husband’s heartbeat every night or anything. He just happened to notice.

After a few more minutes of Aziraphale being the most restless pillow EVER, Crowley sighed and opened his eyes again.

“Hey, angel. Don’t go closing your eyes now, I know you’re awake. Talk to me.”

Aziraphale too sighed and abandoned his act. 

It had not really made sense in the first place. Aziraphale trusted Crowley with his life. He didn’t want to burden the demon with his worries, but he knew that Crowley was there for him. He knew that talking to Crowley would make him feel better, it always did.

The demon just had something about him that calmed the angel. No matter how hopeless things got, even if the whole world was against him, the red-haired demon would always be right there by his side, smiling that familiar crooked but warm smile. That was how it always had been.

So really, telling Crowley was the only sensible thing to do, yet Aziraphale had hesitated all day. He just couldn’t seem to find the words.

But now was different, wasn’t it? Now it was night and night had a talent for revealing things that were hidden during the day. Everything felt different at night.

Right here, in their shared bed, cocooned by darkness and with the familiar weight of his husband by his side, Aziraphale felt safe.

He looked down at the serpent nestled in his arms and Crowley looked up at his angel.

In the pale moonlight that was filtering through their curtains, Aziraphale’s pale, angelic eyes seemed to glow from within. Nobody could deny that he was beautiful.  
Crowley’s eyes glowed as well, but with a decidedly different light. His eyes mirrored the fires of hell, where evil souls burned for their crimes. Crowley had always hated them for who they showed him to be.

Aziraphale thought they were beautiful.

For a moment they just laid there, looking at each other. The inky darkness of the night blanketed them and closed them of from everything and everyone else. In this moment, there was just them and the moon outside the window. In moments like this one, in the safety of the darkness around them, all their doubts and insecurities laid open for each other to see.

Aziraphale sighed again and turned to his side so he was facing his husband. The light of their eyes was mingling in the space between them. 

In this moment, their moment, everything that Azirapgale had been thinking about all day just started spilling out of him.

“I just can’t stop thinking about it. About Henry. About who his father might be. Because what if it’s something horrible? What if Henry truly is dangerous? What will we do then? We can’t kill him, at least, I can’t. He’s our son, Crowley. And I love him. But what if I’m loving a monster?”

Crowley sighed deeply. The angel´s worries didn´t surprise him. It were the same ones that he had been struggling with himself. The truth was that neither of them could know. They had no idea what this meant. They could only hope. 

He could not tell Aziraphale that everything would be fine. He could only tell him what the demon already told himself.

“Don’t say that, angel. His parent might’ve been a monster, but Henry isn’t. You know him. Heaven and hell are wrong about him, just as they were wrong about Adam. What you are does not define WHO you are, we are living proof of that. Whatever Henry is, he will still be the child we love. His parentage won’t change that. I promise.”

Crowley was tempted to add a goofy joke about “we raised the Antichrist and he turned out great”, but he didn’t. It would have felt wrong, it would have disturbed the moment. He wasn’t sure what exactly the moment was, but he didn’t want it to end.

It felt...right somehow. Honest. Open. Almost sacred. 

Aziraphale only gave him a small, but genuinely happy smile. Crowley had not said much, but it had been enough. He felt calm again. Lighter. His worries weren´t gone, but he was no longer alone.

“Thank you”, he whispered.

He did not add “I love you”. They both knew.

With his mind soothed for the moment, they both finally fell asleep again, wrapped up in each other’s arms.

An angel and a demon. Hidden away in the night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is not what I was planning, but the hurt/comfort feels just hit me.  
> I´m not particularily good at h/c, so I hope this is okay.
> 
> The next 2 chapters are already done and will be up in the next few days. There will be angst. More angst than I planned. It just sorta happened.


	9. The Last Prophecy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was going to wait until tomorrow to post this one, but it´s already done, so I suppose it makes no difference. Have this.
> 
> So, there will be my attempt at Agnes Nutter´s English in here.  
> A huge thank you to walking_contradiction42 for checking it and reassuring me that what I planned makes sense. You´re great.

When they woke up the next morning, neither of them mentioned what had happened during the night. It would´ve been wrong to talk about their conversation in the harsh daylight.

Still they smiled at each other occasionally to reassure themselves that it had not been a dream. 

Even though nothing had been solved, they both felt lighter. A problem shared is a problem halved. And now they were twice as determined to solve what the hell/heaven was going on.

So even if they knew it was probably hopeless, they searched everything. They read every book in the shop and Aziraphale had to call in thousands of favours from fellow collectors to borrow books on religion and celestial beings that were rare even by his standards. Aziraphale was even willing to try the vile internet. After being carefully instructed by Crowley, he quickly realised that misinformation and hate was just one part of it. It was also a treasury of knowledge and wisdom and there were more cats than he had expected. He liked the cats. They were very cute and maybe a tad distracting from his very important research.

In the end, they agreed that Crowley would take the internet. He was better versed in its use, not as easily distracted by funny cat videos and also the dust from all the books was making him sneeze. While Aziraphale could, of course, keep his books perfectly dust-free, he chose not to. The dust was just a vital part of the old-book-feeling. After living among books so long, he had become quite used their general state of dustiness and it only rarely made him sneeze these days.

So Aziraphale took the books and Crowley took the internet. They made quite the efficient team and combed through information at an impressive rate which unfortunately didn´t change the fact that they found absolutely nothing. They would have to look elsewhere.

Next, they miracled appointments with priests and theology professors to ask them questions for a supposed book they were writing about the apocalypse. Aziraphale became quite excited about their “cover story” and insisted that they used fake names like proper undercover agents. (I think you know which names they used.) Crowley loudly complained that they were ridiculous, but still had great fun with introducing himself like James Bond every time while laughing uncontrollably. (Gaiman. Neil Gaiman. Get it? GAY MAN!!! HAHAHAHA) It really confused everyone who wasn´t them, but everyone knows that authors are insane, so nobody questioned it. Both Aziraphale and Crowley had great fun, but the people they interviewed could tell them nothing they hadn´t known before.

So, who could they ask? Heaven and hell? Not likely. The only ones who would known anything were the higher-ups and even if they still seemed to believe that the two of them were dangerous, they really couldn´t afford to start a war right now. But who else was there to ask?

They were just about to give up when, like a sign from God, their phone started ringing.

For a moment they just stared at it. There was really only one person it could be. And there really weren´t many reasons for her to call. A few loud rings sounded in the quiet of the book shop. 

Then Aziraphale squealed happily and started jumping up and down. He pointed at the phone.

“This is it. I know it.”

Crowley sighed. He was trying very hard to not get his hopes up, but even he couldn´t deny the spark of optimism.

“We don´t know that for sure, angel.”

“Come on, why else would she call? She found something. I know it.”

“Maybe she did, maybe she didn´t. Either way, you should definitely answer the phone now.”

“Oh, yes. You´re right.”

Aziraphale snapped his fingers. The phone answered itself and was now set to speaker. He could have just done it himself, but he was excited. This was great! 

Now then. Guests in the house. Well, not in the house, but you know…

Aziraphale did his best to stop the happy jumping and tried to compose himself. He cleared his throat and tried not to sound like a person that had just been jumping around the shop like a human child, but like a reasonable, 6,000-year-old angel.

“Good evening, Anathema! Aziraphale here. How are you?”

He sounded only vaguely over-excited. He was proud of himself.

“Hey, guys”, Anathema said and if she sounded weirdly hesitant, that was surely just Aziraphale´s imagination. This was Anathema. She always had the answers. “Remember when you asked me to look into Agnes about Henry? I might´ve found something.”

Aziraphale waited expectantly. He was almost bouncing up and down on his feet from excitement. It probably looked ridiculous, but he couldn´t help himself. This was it! They would know for sure what Henry was and that he wasn´t dangerous. It was almost too good to be true.

His excited smile turned into a frown when Anathema didn´t immediately continue.

“Well, dear?”, he prompted. “What did you find? This is wonderful news indeed! I admit that I was becoming a bit restless, but this will clear up everything nicely.”

There was more silence at the other end of the line. Just when they started wondering if she might have accidentally hung up, she spoke again. Her voice was slow and unsure. Like she didn´t want to really say it.

“Like I said, it might be about Henry. I´m not actually sure. I burned the new prophecies, but I kept the ash. It was just a sentimental thing. Agnes was such a huge part of my life, but I never expected to need her again. After you called, I looked through the ash and one piece of prophecy survived. Like a miracle. There´s no way this wasn´t intentional. But…it´s weird. This one is different somehow. It…rhymes?”

Aziraphale went pale and sunk back down into his chair. All the cheerful energy just seemed to drain out of him.

“It rhymes?”, he echoed blankly. “Well, that´s not good. No, not good at all. A prophetess that doesn´t rhyme suddenly starts? No, not a good sign at all.”

He mustered a weak smile though it seemed more as if he was just trying to convince himself.

“What does it say, dear? That everything is just tickety-boo, I suppose?”

Anathema hesitated briefly, but then she cleared her throat and read the prophecy aloud.

_“When the monstere hath found love once mor  
Deftruction be upon us all  
Brother kylledth brother and will kylledth again  
Fleeth to the sacred place off menne  
There be mor to him than meeths the ey  
Mixed blood sharl ryse and the restless man will dye.”_

When she finished reading, the bookshop was almost eerily silent. Not even the bustle of the streets outside filtered in. It was as if the whole world held its breath at this bleak glimpse into the future.

Aziraphale´s face had turned positively ashen and his otherwise cheery voice sounded hollow.

“Yes, I figured something like that. Well, this is…bad. Very, very bad. Still, there´s nothing we can´t do together, right Crowley?”

The angel turned to his husband, expecting the familiar comfort of his smile. They had faced the apocalypse together and even if the world was against him, even if everything was hopeless, he could still rely on Crowley.

That’s why it came as even more of a shock to him when he did not find that comforting smile on his lover´s face. Crowley stood there frozen, his mouth agape. Only when Aziraphale called his name again, did he seem to notice that the other was even there. But even then, he did not look like the Crowley Aziraphale knew. His usually warm, golden eyes were wild and burned with a different, almost feverish fire. 

Not even the worst prophecy could shake Aziraphale like seeing his husband like this. 

He seemed so alien, so far away. It was terrifying.

Then that strange person that didn´t look like his husband spoke and his words made the blood freeze in the angel´s veins.

“I need to kill Henry.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Soooooo.....there´s that.
> 
> Sorry not sorry.  
> Actually, I´m very sorry. Please don´t hate me.
> 
> What do you think the prophecy means? All I will say is that the restless man is not The Doctor, even though I love the idea.
> 
> Next chapter is already done, but I will let this sit for a few days because I´m evil.
> 
> *laughs manically*
> 
> P.S.: Rhymed prophecies don´t mean anything as far as I know. I just wanted to rhyme shit.


	10. Crowley

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one is pretty short, but I think it works best on its own.

Crowley´s thoughts were racing. 

He felt sick. Was he sick? He couldn´t be sick! Not after what he had just heard.

He wanted to laugh. Why should he laugh? It was not funny. But humans laughed at everything they didn´t understand, so it would probably be an appropriate reaction, wouldn´t it?

No, it wouldn´t. He did understand. Oh, how much he wanted to not understand, but he did and it hurt.

Agnes had truly been an amazing prophetess. She had known everything, foretold everything. All her predictions had been correct and this one would be too. Why did she always have to be right?

He knew what it meant. He hadn´t figured it all out yet, but he knew the important bits. 

This was no coincidence. The timing was no coincidence.

_“I admit that I was becoming a bit restless, but this will clear up everything nicely.”_

Oh, why did Aziraphale have to say that? Why did it have to be him?

_“Mixed blood sharl ryse and the restless man will dye.”_

He knew what this meant. There was only one explanation. 

Henry would kill Aziraphale. 

Who else would mixed blood be? Henry would rise and then Aziraphale would die.

He did not know how, but it would happen. But why did it have to be him? Why did he have to choose between the two people he loved most?

Because it would be him. He had to decide. It was all there in the prophecy.

_“Brother kylledth brother and will kylledth again”_

That was him. He had killed Ligur, a fellow demon and his brother. He had killed and he would kill again. He had to choose between killing Henry and letting him kill Aziraphale.

_“When the monstere hath found love once mor, deftruction be upon us all”_

Was that him or Henry? Could be both. Was he a monster? He felt like a monster. Whoever it meant, the part about the destruction was clear enough.

They had to do something. HE had to do something. He had to choose. But how could he possibly make that choice?

He vaguely registered Aziraphale calling his name and looked up.

The angel looked worried. About him. About a monster. Then his expression slowly morphed into something resembling fear. Good. He finally recognised him for what he was.

Even like this Aziraphale was still beautiful. The only pure thing in Crowley´s rotten, wretched heart was the love for this angel.

He would not let him die, no matter the cost.

“I need to kill Henry.”

Only when he saw the ~~disgusted~~ shocked look on the angel´s face, did he realise that he had said that out loud.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, that was Crowley's point of view on what happened at the end of last chapter. I hope it doesn't seem too ooc.
> 
> That's all I have finished so far. I can't say exactly when the next chapters are going to be ready because exams are coming up, but I'll do my best to keep uploading once a week.


	11. Our own side

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This has (again) gotten very angsty. I'm sorry.
> 
> Also I feel like this could need a warning, but I don't know for what exactly, so just a general warning right here.

“I need to kill Henry”, Crowley said and immediately seemed to regret it. His eyes went wide in shock as if he hadn´t really meant to say it.

Surely, he hadn´t, had he? Crowley would never say such a thing.

“Crowley?”, Aziraphale asked softly. He wanted to say so much more ( _Tell me you don´t mean that. He´s our child. YOU PROMISED!_ ), but he couldn´t seem to find the words. There were no words in any language that could describe what he felt.

“I´m sorry, angel”, was all Crowley said, not hearing the wordless plea. “It´s the only way.”

His yellow eyes were rimmed with red. He was crying. Why was he crying? He wasn´t the one whose whole world had just been torn apart by just a few words.

“But…but…”, Aziraphale stuttered. Say it. He promised. HE PROMISED! But the words wouldn’t come out.

“He´s not human. He´s dangerous.”

Crowley seemed to be trying to convince himself just as much as the angel. He was shaking now. Silent tears were dripping from his eyes. His demonic eyes. He wasn´t human either. He was a demon. So why should Henry be dangerous when he wasn’t.

He’d promised that Henry’s parentage wouldn’t change anything. He’d promised. Say it. SAY IT!

“But…you promised. You said it wouldn´t change anything.”

“I was wrong.”

The flat tone of his voice. Like it didn´t matter. Like that promise wasn´t all Aziraphale had been clinging onto for days now. He couldn´t believe it. He wouldn´t believe it. This wasn´t real. This was all just a dream. He just had to convince himself and then he would wake up.

“No, you weren´t. You were right, you always are. We can still fix it. We will raise him to be good. He will be human, like Adam. We can do this. Together we can do anything.”

Aziraphale nodded to himself. That was right. That was real. He just had to say it often enough until he believed it himself. Then he would wake up from his nightmare. Then he would see the real Crowley again. Because this wasn´t him. He knew his husband. He would never say such a thing.

“NO, WE CAN´T!”

Where had that come from? Aziraphale looked up. Not-Crowley was right in front of him, breathing heavily. When had he come so close? Aziraphale hadn´t heard him move. Pesky dream logic. Didn´t seem real at all.

“You´re wrong”, Aziraphale said simply and turned away. He just had to wake up now. He would wake up from this nightmare in their shared bed. Crowley would hug and comfort him and tell him that everything would be alright. And everything would be alright because the real Crowley would never lie to him.

He put his head down onto his knees. When had he pulled them up? He must have at some point. He was no longer sitting in the chair. He must have slipped down onto the floor. Why did his face feel so wet? Was he crying? Surely he would have noticed if he had started crying. 

Why was he still dreaming? Did he not believe it enough yet? He tried again:

“We can still fix it. We will raise him to be good. He will be human, like Adam. We can do this. Together we can…”

“NO!”

Aziraphale´s head snapped up. Not-Crowley was still there. He was crying harder now. Tears stained his face that looked so much like Aziraphale´s real Crowley. It hurt seeing him like this, even if it wasn´t real. He wanted to make him better.

Not-Crowley took a deep, shaky breath that sounded too much like a sob and continued:

“Face it, angel. We have no idea what we’re doing here and it’s not like we had the best role models either. God may be the Almighty, but she was also a terrible parent who didn’t give a damn about her children! Maybe we’ll do better or maybe we’ll mess up Henry just as badly as she messed up us! Honestly, sometimes I wonder why I’m even trying!”

Not-Crowley covered his face with his hands and turned away. Sobs were wracking his body. Aziraphale wanted to make it better. Dream-Crowley had to know that he was loved.

“You don’t mean that, Crowley. Surely you know that God loves you.”

 _I love you._ He meant to but didn´t say. Surely, Crowley knew. He always knew.

But Not-Crowley wasn´t his Crowley. He only seemed to get more angry.

“Don’t be so bloody naive, Aziraphale! God never loved me! She literally cast me into hell just for asking questions! She doesn’t care, not about me and not about you! When have you even last spoken to her?!”

Aziraphale winced. That had always been a sore spot for him. Crowley knew him well enough to not bring it up, but this wasn´t Crowley. Aziraphale hadn´t spoken to the Almighty in centuries. He had tried to reach her during the apocalypse, but to no avail. Still, he wasn´t so arrogant as to assume that she didn´t have better things to do. There was a perfectly reasonable explanation for this.

“Well, she’s terribly busy, you see. All that guiding the cosmos and...”

Not-Crowley only laughed. It was a terrible, broken sound. More crying than laughing.

“Yeah, keep lying to yourself! God doesn’t “guide the cosmos”, our sides do! God gave up on her creation, no one has spoken to her in centuries! She’s gone and she left us here!”

“I thought there wasn’t an “our sides” anymore. You said we were on our own side.”

“Well, maybe I was wrong.”

Deafening silence followed this admission. The words hung heavily between them. Not-Crowley´s face suddenly looked stricken like even his dreams regretted to go so far. Then Not-Crowley sighed.

“I´m leaving, angel. I´ll fix this and then I´ll be back. I promise.”

He left and Aziraphale didn´t stop him. He wasn´t real. He would never come back. He wouldn´t fix this. He had already broken one promise and Aziraphale knew better than to trust him by now.

Everything would be better without Not-Crowley there. Now he could focus on getting the real Crowley back. At escaping from this dream.

But how could he escape? He’d already tried to tell himself that this wasn’t real. It had always worked before, but now it didn’t for some reason. Would simply going to sleep work? Surely, you would then wake up in the real world, right?

Aziraphale got up and stumbled upstairs and into their bedroom. He didn´t bother getting undressed before he fell into the bed. This wasn´t real anyway. He pulled the covers over himself and shivered. Everything felt so empty without Crowley. But it wouldn´t for much longer. He just had to fall asleep now and then he would wake up in the real world.

He would wake up in Crowley´s arms and everything would be alright again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry once again. It will get better now.
> 
> Also a HUGE thank you to walking_contradiction42. I really needed someone to talk this through with and you've always been there for me. You're amazing.
> 
> They are also currently doing an AMAZING rewrite of Good Omens called [Good Romance](https://archiveofourown.org/works/27634933/chapters/67614886). It's really good, you should check it out.
> 
> You may have also noticed that there is a final chapter count now. I finally got around to planning the whole thing and there will be 16 chapters in total + 1 additional crack chapter.


	12. Realisations

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know that I said I'd try to update once a week but things are a bit chaotic right now.  
> At least the chapter is a bit longer this time? Still not really long, but still.  
> I'm not entirely sure how I feel about this yet. It's definitely a bit less angsty though.

Crowley didn’t remember how he had gotten here. He was in the park now walking around aimlessly. _Their_ park. Everything was still exactly how he remembered despite being entirely remade by the literal antichrist at some point. 

The ducks were still being fed by entirely conspicuous secret agents who failed drastically at dressing normal. They really should do a better costume course at spy academy. And maybe some acting classes while they were at it. If someone fed the ducks in St. James’ Park, they were almost certainly a secret agent. Come up with something new!

The bench they had swapped back on after fooling their sides was still there. ( _ ~~I thought there wasn’t an “our sides” anymore. You said we were on our own side.~~_ ) He walked past it. No need to dwell on memories. He would do what was necessary to protect his angel. Even if it meant killing someone he loved. Even if it meant that Aziraphale would hate him. 

He passed that spot under the maple tree that they had had a picknick at a few months ago. Henry had been there, toddling over the uneven grass and chasing butterflies. Things had been simpler than. Happier. The future had seemed so much brighter.

Crowley huffed in frustration and walked faster, eager to leave this spot ( _ ~~their spot~~_ ) behind. There was no changing the past, but the future was still in their hands. _His_ hands. Quite literally. And he would make sure that Aziraphale would still be there to see it.

That was a lie of course and Crowley knew it. He was not a killer. He couldn´t kill Henry. Sure, he had killed Ligur, but that was different. Ligur had been evil. Henry was not evil, no matter how hard he tried to convince himself. He wouldn´t kill Henry.

It spoke volumes that he had just stormed off to sulk in the park and left Aziraphale behind with the child that would be his doom. If he were really ready to kill Henry, he would have done it right then and there. He couldn´t bear kill the child that played with Aziraphale´s books even though he was not allowed to. That laughed at his games. That called him that funny little nickname he had never had the heart to protest against. He couldn´t kill the child that he had started to love. Not even for Aziraphale. He couldn´t bear seeing either of them die. He couldn´t bear the thought of Aziraphale hating him.

He wouldn´t kill Henry. It had been decided the minute he left the house without taking Henry with him. He just hadn´t admitted it to himself yet.

He was still angry. At Aziraphale. At God. At destiny. Choose your pick. It didn’t matter in the end. Whoever you blamed for it, the end result was that things sucked and there was nothing he could do about it. Last time destiny had been on there side, this time it wasn’t.

He couldn’t do anything about the future that Agnes wouldn’t already have seen and it frustrated him to no end. His whole body was vibrating with it, bits of his snake form shining through. It probably looked really weird to everyone else, but Crowley couldn’t care less. They were all to damn polite to say something about it anyway.

Crowley punched a tree. Maybe that would make him feel better. It didn’t. The old lady with the even older poodle that was walking past him gave him a disapproving look. He deliberately let his snake-self show for a moment just to see if he would get a reaction. She merely nodded politely and continued walking while muttering something about the side effects of heart medication. That did not improve Crowley’s mood. Also his hand hurt now. It had been a hard tree.

“You really are a bastard, you now that?!”, he yelled up at the sky. The literally only perk of being a demon was that you always knew exactly who to blame. God had built the universe from nothing and planned its course until the end. She had orchestrated all of this and now refused to take constructive criticism. It was very annoying.

As usual, the Almighty didn’t answer. Never did. He didn’t know why he even still tried. Maybe yelling at the sky was cathartic somehow? Well, then he should be feeling better now, right? He didn’t. He still felt like shit. Still, he couldn’t find the motivation to stop. 

“You go through all that trouble with creating the world and creating him, for what? So you can kill him? Because you like pure and kind souls dying a needless death? Because he is pure and he is kind! He is the kindest angel you have ever created and you’re just gonna throw that away?! So you can be ENTERTAINED? Because that’s what you do, isn’t it? You like watching them die for you! Well, you can’t have him!”

The sky remained silent. A few clouds were drifting over it, but otherwise it was clear. It was a beautiful day. God didn’t even bother denying it. She had never cared enough to do that.

Crowley punched another tree. It still hurt, but he didn’t know what else to do. Where else to go. He couldn’t go back to the bookshop. To Aziraphale and Henry. He couldn’t explain. He couldn’t look at them and know that one of them would have to die. 

That’s when he heard a sudden thumb behind him.

\----------------------

Aziraphale had woken up to an empty bed. There was no Crowley next to him. There was no Crowley in the rest of the flat. Crowley was gone.

He hadn’t been dreaming. This nightmare was real.

Aziraphale couldn’t find it in him to look for his husband, not after what had happened last night. He tried to go about his business as usual, but he couldn’t ignore the empty space that the demon had left behind. Things were too silent, too still. There was no music blaring from the flat upstairs, no one laughing and playing with Henry. There was no demon sauntering back inside at the end of the day and flashing him one of his brilliant smiles.

There never would be again. 

It was almost a relief when the doorbell rang.

\----------------------

Anathema had heard quite a lot of their conversation before the call ended itself. She had heard what Crowley had said and she knew the demon well enough to notice how odd he had been behaving.

She needed to fix this.

It had all began after hearing the prophecy, so naturally that was where she started. It still sounded like very gloomy gibberish to her. She had no idea what any of it could mean, but Crowley obviously had. Whatever it was, it would have to be extremely bad to provoke such a reaction.

So she set to work and tried once again to decipher the words of a centuries-old witch. You’d think that this kind of thing gets easier the more you do it, but that was not the case. Agnes had been an extremely weird person. Probably the kind of person that walks around in St. James’ park in the early morning.

It really was an extremely odd prophecy. There was the rhyming which was definitely new and also the overly catastrophic atmosphere. Agnes normally didn’t write like this. Even when writing about the literal apocalypse, she had always made sure to stress that there was hope.

So why not now? Well, there were only two possible answers. Agnes either knew that they would lose this fight or was sure that they would easily win it with the information she had given them. But what exactly was that information. 

_There be mor to him than meeths the ey_

This line pretty obviously referred to Henry. It was the same with _Mixed blood sharl ryse_ in the last verse. Henry seemed to play an important part in whatever was coming. But who were all the other people?

There were the monster that finds love, the brother that killed his brother and the restless man. That was actually a surprisingly big amount of people for just one prophecy and they knew so little about each. This really wasn’t Agnes’ style. She normally made sure that you could at least somewhat understand what she was talking about.

But what if she was going about this all wrong?

The prophecy had come at relatively short notice and there wouldn’t be time for a lot of research. Agnes expected her to find these people quickly. Maybe she already knew them or had at least heard of them? And then there were these 3 people, at least two of them male and none of them were described in depth. There was no way she could find any of them this fast if she was going of so little information. But what if she wasn’t? What if they where all the same person?

This was all based on guesses until now, but Agnes would’ve been able to predict them and make sure that she guessed the right thing at the right time. This couldn’t hurt. So a man that was restless, killed his brother and could be described as a monster. Someone she’d heard of. Someone he knew.

Maybe monster just meant supernatural? She didn’t know that many supernaturals personally (though still way more than the average person) and none of them had killed their brothers, so it was probably a famous figure.

Let’s see. A famous supernatural man that killed his brother and could be described as restless. She still came up empty. There was probably something in the bible about him somewhere. She could just scan through it. Probably wouldn’t need to. Any decent narrative demanded that if she opened the book at a random spot, it would immediately be the right one.

The book opened on Genesis and suddenly everything started to make sense.

“I need to call Aziraphale.”

\--------------------

Aziraphale opened the door and the person outside was not Crowley. He hadn’t really expected it to be him, the demon had a key after all. Still there was this undeniable disappointment that Aziraphale didn’t quite manage to ignore.

The strange man smiled at him. It didn’t look very real, but business smiles rarely were.

“Hello, my name is Mr Nod. I work for a company called Abel Books. You got into contact with us a few months ago. I’m terribly sorry that we couldn’t answer sooner. We were a bit swamped, you see, but your offer really piqued our interest. May I come in?”

Aziraphale smiled back a bit confusedly. He didn’t remember getting in touch with any company called Able Books, but it must have simply slipped his mind. Must be a pretty odd company to send someone at this time of day and months later. What had he offered them again? He couldn’t remember. It wasn’t the best time right now, but sending the man away would simply be rude.

“Yes, of course. I’d totally forgotten about you too. Please come in. May I offer you some tea?”

The man smiled another polite but ungenuine smile and followed the angel into the shop. He gazed approvingly at the many first editions that adorned the shelves and Aziraphale used this distraction to miracle two steaming cups of tea. He offered one of them to the man who took it but didn’t drink any.

“Now then. What exactly was it that I contacted you abou...”

The phone rang. Aziraphale shot an apologetic smile to his visitor and went to answer it. It was probably Anathema. He didn’t know quite how much of yesterday’s events she had witnessed over the phone, but it would probably be good to reassure her about it. Crowley might be gone, but he was fine. Really. ( _ ~~He wasn’t.~~_ )

“Hello, Anathema”, he started. “Listen, about yesterday...”

“I know who Henry’s father is.”

Aziraphale paused.

“I’m sorry, you what?"

“No time to explain. It’s Cain, Aziraphale. I don’t know why, but I think he’s looking for the child. You have to be careful, he could show up any moment! Don’t let Henry out of your sight! Do you hear me?!"

But Aziraphale wasn’t listening anymore. He was too busy thinking about the man with the peculiar name that he had just let into the shop. That was still inside the shop.

There was movement behind him. Pain exploded in his head and then everything went black.

\----------------------

There was a sign in the park.

Crowley was sure it hadn’t been there a moment ago. It was glaringly obvious, so he would’ve definitely noticed it. It was bright red with large block letters. Blinking arrows pointed at it from all sides. The only way for it to be more obvious was if it had smacked him right in the face.

Judging by that weird thumping noise, it had just falken from the sky.

A man in an extremely yellow jacket that clashed spectacularly with the rest of his clothing walked by, gave the sign a passing glance and then turned to Crowley.

“Well, that went down like a lead signpost”, he said. “Have you noticed an acceleration of strangeness in your life too?”

Crowley hissed at him. The man shrugged and left. At his whistle, a dog burst through the bushes and followed him. The dog had three heads. St. James’ Park was full of weird people at this time of day. Crowley wasn’t bothered by this. He was probably the weirdest of them after all.

He looked back at the sign. It was still blinking and being quite undeniably real. It was annoying. 

_The only thing worse than talking to God and being ignored, is when she actually answers_ , Crowley decided.

Then he started running.

The sign stayed where it was blinking extremely obtrusively. It would probably confuse quite a lot of visitors during more reasonable hours or maybe it wouldn’t be there anymore. Maybe it would vanish just as suddenly as it had appeared. It had fulfilled its purpose after all. It had every right to go back home after a work well done.

But for now the sign remained in the park, flashing its warning.

_**THE ANGEL’S IN DANGER** _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've been rewatching Dirk Gently lately and now he is just sorta taking a walk in the park. It's not going to appear in the story ever again, but why not.
> 
> Sooooooo...Cain. He hasn't appeared in the book or the show, so I thought it would be a funny choice. It will also enable me to make a bad punchline about odd numbers which may or may not be the main reason why I chose him.


	13. Ineffable

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> God being ineffable.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, this chapter is gonna be from God‘s POV.
> 
> That may be a weird choice but I think we all know what Crowley is thinking right now while God‘s thoughts on the matter are probably a bit more, well...ineffable.
> 
> Before we start, I really need to thank some people.
> 
> Thank you again to the wonderful walking_contradiction42. Thank you for being willing to interrupt our discussion about the fanfiction trope with the most juicy feelings to talk about God of all things. Thank you for listening to my weird drafts and random ideas. What more is there to say, you‘re amazing.
> 
> I also wanted to thank elf_on_the_shelf. You‘ve commented a multiple times now and they‘ve always made me EXTREMELY happy. Last time you commented something about God and that actually inspired this whole thing. I hope you‘re still reading this because this chapter is for you now. It might be a bit random, but I do hope you like it.

As per usual, multiple things were happening at once.

A Bentley was speeding through central London. Inside was a demon who had just received the first message from God in millennia. She smiled. There was nothing for her to do there.

Somewhere in Mexico a girl was brewing tea. She was singing along loudly to some human pop music that she had never understood the appeal of, but the girl seemed happy, so she approved. In her joyous dancing, the girl had totally forgotten about the tea. More and more of the leaves was leaking into the water and turning the pleasant taste bitter. She gave one particle a small nudge and the laws of physics bend to her will. The tea would stay just the right amount of bitter for as long as the girl needed. She smiled again. Sometimes making people happy was so easy.

Sadly, not always, as the third thing illustrates.

Another car was also driving through London but at significantly lower speed. The driver was, after all, not able to perform miracles and clear the way, even if he was just as immortal. The van proclaimed to belong to a company called Abel Books that did not actually exist. Inside were three of her creations which she regarded with mixed feelings.

There was the angel Aziraphale, one of her favourites if she had allowed herself to have them, who was currently unconscious. The second one was a child. He belonged both to the angel, the driver and a demon. He belonged to heaven, hell and earth in equal parts. She liked him quite a lot. One of her best ones. His name was Henry. A name given to him by the angel who might or might not know what it meant. There had been people like him before and one of them had shared his name or at least something close to it. Enoch, Henoch or Hanok depending on who you asked. She had also liked him. She had been sad when he died and his soul still resided in a heaven quite close to hers. Not that that had a particular reason. God didn’t do favourites.

The last person in the van, the driver, was one of her earliest creations and the one she disliked most, apart perhaps from Hitler. Cain had survived the centuries only due to the mark he bore. A mark created by her to protect his life. Sometimes she regretted creating it. She could have prevented all the pain he caused. Still, she hadn’t been able to bring herself to let him die. He had been one of her first. An experiment. Not exactly human yet but close. A failure perhaps but still one of her first. 

She loved all of her creations, she truly did. The only problem was that she didn’t love them all equally. And how could she expect them not to show favouritism if she did? So she tried to interfere only if it was best for everyone which was almost never. Humans were too complex, there were too many conflicting interests and emotions. She couldn’t possibly make everyone happy. She was paralysed by her love for them.

Imagine an elevator. Everyone is in a rush and just a few seconds of wait can turn a bad day worse. Now imagine you’re an interdimensional being for whom the laws of physics are merely options that can be changed at will. You can make sure that the elevator always arrives at just the right time. Everyone is happy. But what if two people approach the same elevator simultaneously? In the beginning everything seems easy. You control the world. Creating a second elevator that will not hinder the first is no problem for you. For a while everything goes well. People’s lives get just that little bit happier. Until someone notices that there’s more elevators than there should be. They check the shafts and see two elevators passing cleanly through each other. One might think that they would just accept this little inexplicable miracle and allow it to make their day better, but that’s not human nature. Humans are scared of everything they don’t understand, so they shut the place down and declare it haunted. Maybe burn some innocent person as a witch while they’re at it. Your little act of kindness leads to more fear and sorrow and wasted potential.

Imagine that but on a global scale.

You try and try so hard, but nothing ever works. You try showing yourself to them and they start a war with their neighbours about how to interpret your signs. And who do you support in this war? They’re both your people with only tiny differences separating them. You try to help them, but they ignore your signs and listen only to what fits their views best.

Your own children oppose their siblings and cast them out while you’re doing the godly equivalent of grocery shopping. They misjudge your intentions so much that they wipe out half of your beloved humanity in a flood because they think that their purity would be more important to you than their lives.

What would you do then? How long would you try to be a responsible but not overbearing parent? How long would you try to make them understand until you realise that they never will? That your creations are just too different from you to grasp your motivations. That you are _ineffable_ to them. 

How long would you keep going until you give up?

So she did nothing. A lot of them hated her for it and she probably deserved that. It hurt seeing her loved ones suffer, but what could she do? How could she choose a side? It was an impossible situation and one she had only herself to blame for. She had created everything after all.

Maybe she should stop the van. Prevent Cain from harming ~~her favourite angel~~ Aziraphale anymore. She certainly could do that. She controlled everything. But could she do it without anyone getting hurt? Without the humans getting suspicious? Could she help Aziraphale and Henry escape without hurting Cain? Probably not.

So she did nothing.

In the London district Soho, a Bentley had just arrived at a bookshop that was closed despite the early hour. This was not actually unusual for this particular shop, but today it should be. Things were going to happen here. Important on a scale that might be a bit too personal to be objective.

Quite a lot of her consciousness focused on this part of her universe while the rest remained spread out like a blanket. Maybe this was showing favouritism again but sue her. Nobody would know anyway.

The person that emerged from the car snapped their fingers and the doors swung open seemingly of their own accord. That one had nothing to do with her. The person had however neglected to lock their car relying on it to somehow lock itself. And it did. That one was her. Always had been. It was actually quite endearing how much the demon relied on her without knowing it.

Inside the bookshop everything was as it should be. Well, almost everything. Firstly the angelic owner and his child were very obviously not there when everything demanded that they should be. Secondly the receiver of Aziraphale’s old-fashioned phone was not in its rightful place and instead carelessly dangling off the table.

Aziraphale would never do that. He insisted that then the phone would keep consuming energy and that would just be a waste and also bad for the climate. As Crowley had told him multiple times, their phone didn’t need electricity in the first place because celestial beings don’t bother with stuff like that, but that was besides the point.

Crowley slowly walked over to the phone and picked up the receiver.

“Hello?”, he asked.

“Oh my god, Crowley?! Is that you?!”

Anathema was still on the line. You might call it a miracle. Maybe it was.

“Anathema? What’s going on? Where’s Aziraphale? This bloody sign just dropped out of the sky right in front of me and said he was in danger.”

Yeeeaaah, that hadn’t been her most subtle hint. But it had worked.

“I know who Henry’s father is, Crowley. It’s Cain. I had just told Aziraphale and then there was this horrible noise and he was gone. Is Henry there?”

Crowley looked around even if he already knew the answer. Still, never stop hoping. He sighed.

“No, Henry’s gone too. I’m going to go looking for them. Call me if you find anything.”

And then he moved to hang up. 

Bloody hell, this demon could be dense sometimes. Yeah, he was worried, but he had to know that aimlessly driving through London in search of his husband and son would be useless! Sure, waiting and doing nothing was horrible, but you had to at least plan! She turned the volume of the receiver up a very big bit, so that Crowley could still hear Anathema calling after him.

“Crowley, wait! Just rushing in there with no plan won’t help anyone.”

Her point exactly. Smart girl.

“I may even have an idea of where Cain took them. Remember that prophecy? _Fleeth to the sacred place off menne_? That has to be a church, right?”

Very smart girl. They were nearly there.

Crowley only frowned. 

“You do realise there are probably over a hundred churches in London alone?”

Okay, maybe not so nearly there. Seriously guys? Even smart Anathema didn’t seem to have connected the dots. It looked like a bit more interference might become necessary.

A driver in Texas had just lost control of his car and swerved right into a crowd. God tipped her head (or what counted as a head with interdimensional beings) and the car narrowly managed to avoid hitting anyone. It crashed into a lamppost, but the driver miraculously wasn’t even injured. Not a single ant was hurt.

At the same time, the part of God’s consciousness that was watching Crowley began to slowly pull atoms together. Just some small nudges here and there. Something a bit less obvious than last time.

The particles formed and condensed and just a few inches beneath the bookshop’s ceiling, a fortune cookie materialised out of what had previously been thin air. It started to tilt when it existed enough to become affected by forces like gravity and then dropped straight down and smacked onto Crowley’s head.

Maybe not that subtle after all.

“Bloody heaven!”, Crowley shrieked (yes, shrieked), dropped the receiver and jumped to the side.

He glared quite furiously at the offending object. It looked adorable. Sorry not sorry.

Meanwhile, on the other end of the line, Anathema was panicking.

“CROWLEY?! Are you okay?! What’s happening?”

Crowley shot another endearing death glare at her gift and picked up the phone again.

“Yes, I’m okay. A bloody fortune cookie just dropped from the ceiling. Judging by how this day is going, it’s probably a sign from God. Maybe she’s trying to be subtle. Well, it’s NOT WORKING!!’

That last part was yelled at the sky. While she wasn’t actually physically in the sky, the intention was quite clear. 

Rude.

He was, of course, absolutely correct, but still rude. 

“God dropped a fortune cookie from the ceiling?”, Anathema repeated back in disbelief.

Again, probably justified, but still rude.

“Have you tried opening it?”

Crowley made a noncommittal noise as if that had CLEARLY been his plan, reached down and broke the cookie in half. It made a quite satisfying crunching sound and very convincing crumbs rained to the floor. It looked very real, she should be proud of herself. Then again, everything else also looked real and she had created that too. 

Inside the fortune cookie was, as this type of cookie demanded, a small slip of paper. This one did however not contain vague predictions of the future but quite concise and helpful advice. Nice and accurate, you might say.

_Have you tried googling it?_

Crowley groaned in frustration, but did get out his phone to comply. He typed in _Cain church London_. The London bit was mostly a guess, but it was on the money here.

Multiple newspaper articles came up the first one being titled:

_London Rev Andrew Cain defies church gay blessings ban_

“Well, shit”, said Crowley.

A few more seconds of browsing quickly revealed the church he had worked at. St Mary´s with all souls in Kilburn, merely a twenty-minute drive from Soho.

This wasn´t the same Cain obviously, but he had appreciated the irony of it. Where better to lift the curse God has placed on you than in her own home? Not that the mark was a curse. It gave just as much as it took. Immortality in exchange for restless wandering. But Cain was greedy and wanted the good without the bad even when that was not how life worked.

And now this little ironic joke that he hadn´t thought anyone besides him would discover, would lead Crowley straight to him.

Because Crowley might not know the reasons behind it, but if God herself told you to google it and something actually came up, it was probably the right answer.

He bid Anathema a quick goodbye and ran back outside to his Bentley that had just miraculously unlocked itself, so that he could expose the city to his very safe and not at all risky driving again. At least it was for a good cause in this case. Time was of the essence and both Crowley and his invisible helper knew it.

God didn´t have to listen very closely to hear what he was thinking. Demons didn´t pray, but there was not as big a difference between praying and hoping as one might think. Not that demons hoped either, but this one did or at least something close to it. On second thought, it may have also been more of a promise.

_I´m coming, Aziraphale._

With these words which were more of a telepathic scream than a thought, the Bentley sped off into London and a part of God´s consciousness followed.

At the same time but in a different part of the world, there was a war going on. Parts of her consciousness floated overhead and watched. Prayers were drifting up to her. Prayers for luck and survival and victory. They came from both sides. Both sides had their reasons for what they were doing. She couldn’t help both, so she helped neither.

The only thing she would have been able to do was show herself and make them stop, but she was their mother and not their king. Humans should be good of their own volition and not because they feared her wrath. Free will was important. Free will was worth dying for. And die they did.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was actually a lot of fun to write. I really like God, she´s an interesting character.
> 
> I know that I theoretically said something about weekly updates at some point and I´m still doing my best to do that. I already have the end of 14 and 16 written and 15 is halfway done. If everything goes well, I´ll have this finished by the end of this year.
> 
> Also check out walking_contradiction42´s fic [Good Romance](https://archiveofourown.org/works/27634933/chapters/67614886). It´s really good. There´s a lot of FEELINGS.


	14. Villain Monologues

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I don´t even know

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The characterisation in this fic is inconsistent but then again so am I.

The first thing Aziraphale noticed when he woke up was the pain in his head. It hurt. A lot. And miracling it away wasn´t working. Why not? What was happening?

He opened his eyes and immediately closed them again. The room he was in was only dimly lit by candlelight, but to him it seemed even brighter than the excessively pure light of heaven. He should know about heaven. He used to live there after all. Being an angel and all that. But you knew that already. Kinda hard to focus right now.

He tried again and the light seemed a bit more bearable. Maybe his eyes were adjusting. Did his eyes have to adjust? Well, they did now. You couldn´t live amongst humans for millennia without picking up some things. Not all of them good. Some of them were quite annoying actually, but their inefficiency was part of what made humans so endearing. 

The room he was in actually was quite dark. The only light came from a circle of candles a few feet away from him whose flickering light cast mysterious shadows on the walls. The walls were quite far away actually. Aziraphale couldn´t even see the ceiling. 

Maybe with a bit more light? He tried to miracle some, but nothing happened. He tried to clap his hands which had always worked in the past, only to find them wrapped in chains.

Why were there chains? What kind of chains even were these? Why were there these symbols? One of them looked a bit like the M25 actually. The M25 was fashioned after a satanic symbol.

He was tied up with satanical chains. Great.

“Hello?”, he yelled, but there was no answer. 

The sound echoed back to him quite strangely. Almost like in a church?

_Fleeth to the sacred place off menne_

Yep, definitely a church.

Oh, right. The prophecy. Cain.

He remembered now.

This was all quite rude of him really. He had things to do in the bookshop! Without him there, people might actually buy something! And where was Henry? What was going on?

Well, he appeared to have been kidnapped. Nothing to worry about really. Had already happened multiple times in the past and he had never been severely hurt. Crowley would surely come rushing in in just a few minutes and…

Oh, wait.

No Crowley then. That was fine. He didn´t need him anyway. Could totally do this on his own even if he was a bit, well… _tied up_ at the moment. Nothing to worry about. Everything´s tickety-boo.

Chains, yes. Magic chains. No problem at all. He had trained for this. There had been a whole chapter about how to free yourself from chains in his guide to being a magician. Humans liked other humans escaping from seemingly hopeless scenarios. He had read that chapter almost religiously, as he had the rest of the book. While he had never been able to totally get the hang of it in practice, he surely would now. Special circumstances and that. 

He looked down to the chains again. Ah, yes, no problem. He knew this knot. It had been in the advanced part of the chapter, but he could surely wing it (Hah, wings!). He knew the instructions, he just had to follow them and then he´d be fine. Let´s see. Twist your arm like this, yes, good. Then move your left leg like that and…

Great, now his leg was stuck somewhere beneath his back. It was very uncomfortable. But maybe if he did this…?

Okay, no. This wasn´t working. All he had achieved so far was to get tangled even further. The book had made it all look so simple, but maybe he just wasn´t a very good magician. Crowley had always told him so. Back then, Aziraphale had thought that the demon was just teasing, but in the light of recent events things looked quite different.

Crowley didn´t like him. 

Crowley wouldn´t rescue him.

Aziraphale was a terrible magician and unable to rescue himself.

This was a new low point for him. Even during the apocalypse when everything had seemed hopeless and he had had to realise that heaven didn´t care, Crowley had always been there for him. 

And now he wasn´t. Aziraphale was alone.

And then he wasn´t. 

\----------

This sounds like such a hopeful sentence as if Crowley suddenly came rushing out of the darkness to save his angel and comforted him and everything was alright again. This was not in any way what happened next. We aren´t quite there yet. Patience, my dears.

All that I´m trying to say is that the door opened. The person on the other side wasn´t Crowley, but it is someone you know. Like is an entirely different story. Even God doesn´t really like him and she likes everyone.

The person I´m talking about is of course the adversary of the story. The villain. Cain, son of Adam and Eve, brother and murderer of Abel. One of the first humans God created and the first one to take a life.

He has no redeeming qualities. No, really. No sympathy for the devil here. All the sympathy to the antichrist and a certain demon with amazing hair, but please don´t waste it on Cain. You wouldn´t like him if you met him. He´s rude, manipulative and dislikes chocolate. He makes tea in the microwave. Having only some of these flaws can be forgiven, but Cain really has everything you hate about others. He´s just not a very nice person.

While this is to a certain extent God´s fault for creating him like this, you probably know better than to blame her after that brief look into her thoughts. God doesn´t know everything. God was young once. She was quite young when she created Cain. Humanity was an experiment. And some experiments fail. If you keep trying, you´ll get closer to getting it right, but you can never erase the mistakes you made along the way. You can just minimise the damage.

Anyway, back to our story. Where was I?

Cain came into the room which I might as well call church now because all the characters already know it is one. You even know which church it is. Ever been to that church? I probably don´t need to describe it. It looked like a church. 

The situation is this: A few blocks away, Crowley is breaking every speed limit known to man to get to his husband. Said husband however believes that he isn´t coming and is quite close to giving up. Enter Cain. Our antagonist. With him he brings the child, Henry, a book and a silver dagger. Combine this with the ominous candle circle that is already in the church and I think we all know where this is going. Aziraphale is tied up with magical chains and unable to stop it. Crowley is still too far away to do anything but desperately trying to stop it. Cain is there but has absolutely no interest in stopping. Henry is a toddler. Also there´s God. God, being God, is of course everywhere, but there was quite a lot of her here right now. However, she is not important for the events currently unfolding. Yet.

All seems hopeless. Help is on the way but currently running late. Stalling would be an option, but since Aziraphale doesn´t actually know that anyone´s coming, he has no reason to try. There´s only one thing that can save our heroes now:

_The villain monologue_

We all know it. Every proper, unredeemably evil villain does it. They spend their whole life scheming and plotting for that one big pay-off. You´re not going to waste this moment. You´re going to enjoy it. You have to press every drop of sweet, sweet success out of this moment. You have to bleed it dry of tension until your captured hero is left yawning. This will obviously give everyone else plenty of time to thwart you evil plans, but it is just how things are. I don´t make the rules. Villains are creatures of drama and not of logic. Some evil truly carries the seeds of its own destruction. Cain certainly did.

“Ah, Aziraphale!”, he said dramatically. “I´m sure you are quite comfy?”

The angel shot back a glare. How else are you meant to respond to such a terribly stereotypical question? Every villain asks that!

“Now, I´m sure you are wondering what I´m planning. This all started back when I killed my brother Abel. It was totally justified, of course, but God cast me out for it and marked me with this curse. I should never die. I should never rest. But today I will free myself from this tyranny! Using this child. I´ve sired children before. His name was Enoch. But the curse forces me to wander, so I left before the child was born. When I could return, generations had passed. My blood had become too diluted in his descendants. I could not use them to fulfil my plans.”

Cain paused for dramatic effect. Aziraphale only watched him confusedly. Only when Cain´s expectant eyes didn´t leave him, did he realise that the other wanted some kind of reaction.

“Err, yes. How terrible”, he said lamely. Still, it appeared to be enough for Cain and he continued.

“But today, in this wonderfully connected world, I could return on time to meet him. My line has really flourished quite nicely after all this time, despite how much God hated me and mistreated me. Humanity rules the world and I was one of the first humans. Soon, the humans will no longer need God, for I will be their immortal leader, their guidance, their shepherd, their…” 

This went on for quite a while. I´m going to spare you the details, I think you can see quite clearly what he is getting at. Replace God, rule the world. Something, something, Henry. 

There was quite a lot about Henry. Nothing about him as a person, but him as Cain´s child. That seemed to be important somehow. The only problem was that Aziraphale had no idea why.

“Err, I´m sorry”, he interrupted. “This all sounds very nice -well, not actually nice- but I fail to see what exactly you need Henry for?”

Cain just stared at him. He had been so caught up in his monologue that he had totally forgotten the angel was even there. It had been just like all these times he had practiced this in front of a mirror. Only the mirror had never asked questions. He was not prepared for this.

“My blood in him will allow me to transfer the curse.”

“Ah, yes. But what I don´t see is how that would help. You keep talking about living forever. The mark makes you immortal, but it is also the curse. How can you be immortal if you lose the mark?”

Cain smiled in relief. He was back on familiar terrain here. There was a paragraph in his monologue about this one. It was almost at the end and he would have to skip a lot, but that was fine. As long as he kept his drama up, it would be a speech remembered for centuries.

“The mark is curse and blessing in one. The blessing made twisted by making it part of the curse. The gift of immortality turned endless suffering. But I will stand for it no longer. The mark is not one sign but two joined together. I will transfer the curse to him and keep the blessing for myself.”

“Well, that sounds terrifying. How exactly are you going to do that?”

“Ritual sacrifice.”

Aziraphale waited a few beats but these two words seemed to be the entire answer.

“What? That´s it? What kind of ritual could do that?”

“A secret one.”

“Then how do you know it?”

“I asked a demon.”

“And you think the demons would know?”, Aziraphale asked heatedly. He had quite a lot to say on the topic of demons. “Demons don´t actually know any secret knowledge. I´m an angel. My employer created the mark and even I don´t know how to remove it, nevertheless split it. I don´t even know if it is possible. So I´m sorry if some demons words are all you have been clinging onto these past centuries, but I doubt that he was telling the truth. What demon did you even talk to?”

“He said his name was Crawly or something?”

Aziraphale sighed.

“Yeah, he definitely wasn´t telling the truth.”

Cain was confused now. He had expected to deliver his monologue, triumph over God and then go home to watch bad reality TV. He had not expected this angel to ask so many questions. Since when did angels even ask questions? Didn´t that make them demons or something? His mirror exercises really hadn´t prepared him for this. He had no idea how to continue.

So he did the only reasonable thing: He continued with his original plan anyway. He would just skip the monologue and go straight to the sacrificing bit.  
He put the baby in the centre of the circle and raised the dagger. Were there supposed to be incantations or something? The demon had said to bring the book but nothing about reading it. Really seemed to be a bit too simple now that he thought about it, but there was no reason to stop now. This was his chance. He didn´t really have anything to lose now anyway.

Aziraphale froze.

“Wait, no! What are you doing?! Stop! Didn´t you listen? It won´t work! Stop!”

Cain smiled to himself. This was better. He could work with fear. He raised the blade higher.

“No, please! Stop! I´m begging you! You have nothing to gain from this!”

Cain only laughed.

“Begging won’t use anything. Nothing can save him now.”

And then the wall exploded.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy first anniversary of the MCR return show. Still waiting...
> 
> I made cookies today and now my sister is reanimating my teddy bear in the background and just used the ninja pig as a defibrillator. I have lost control of both my life and this story


	15. Spontaneous combustion

Are you aware of the phenomenon known as spontaneous combustion? The details aren’t really important here, but the gist is that humans, according to some more or less trust-worthy reports, sometimes just implode without any apparent reason. The only thing you really need to know is that there is no recorded incident of this ever happening to a wall.

So clearly, going by empirical evidence, there had to be a reason for this particular wall to suddenly and seemingly spontaneously combust. And this reason revealed itself only a few seconds later, as the dust cleared, to be a black Bentley that had apparently just driven into the wall and shattered it.

Normally, a car would not be able to shatter a solid stone wall, but this was no ordinary car. It was an original Bentley that despite its age had just this morning been in absolute prime condition. All the scratches and dents it had now could probably be traced back to it shattering said wall.

This Bentley had driven across the dreaded sigil Odegra that had formerly been the M25 and its passenger had survived. After its heroic death following this outstanding feat, it had been remade and quite possibly also improved by the literal antichrist.

This car did not need maintenance or fuel. It had had only one owner from new and said owner had been a demon and whatever he believed his car could do it could. If there was any car in existence that could shatter a solid stone wall, it would be this one.

There was also a small miracle involved, but it remains unclear whose it was.

As you will already have guessed, the person that stumbled out of the wrecked vehicle after briefly struggling with the jammed door, was none other than Crowley, the serpent of Eden, attempted preventor of Armageddon and husband to the angel Aziraphale.

He very nearly made a comment about the performance of modern cars but then remembered that he had already used that line.

He would have to improvise something then.

“Cain, darling, how are you? Haven’t seen you since Enoch. What have you been up to? Apart of course from kidnapping my husband and son.”

Cain was not in a good mood. People kept doing things they weren´t supposed to and it was ruining his performance. At least he knew this person. Crawly would help him, he had told him about this ritual thing in the first place. He would handle all this. Not that Cain needed help or anything.

He turned around with a smile on his face and…

The weird demon from the bookshop was standing in the church.

Where had he come from? Where was Crawly?

Then the rest of what Crowley had just said registered in his brain.

Well, shit.

Crawly was Crowley. The names actually _did_ sound quite similar. And they looked almost the same too. His hair was just shorter now. And the clothes were pretty different too. Well, it _had_ been a few thousand years. Shame on him for not recognising him.

Well, nevermind. This performance was a train wreck anyway. He really had nothing to lose by keeping it going at this point. He plastered on another crazy smile and turned to his audience that had just grown by a demon and a semi-sentient car.

“Crawly, you lying demon! Come to watch the show, have you? A nice ritual sacrifice, just like you told me. Almost done now.”

Crowley suddenly looked flustered and cleared his throat awkwardly.

“Err, yes about that. I was maybe just a teensy-tiny bit drunk when I told you about that? It´s just…you looked so sad and hopeless and I wanted to cheer you up. Not that I´m nice or anything, I was also totally planning to destroy your hopes somewhere in the future, so…yes. That time is now. It´s not going to work and you might as well stop now. Not that me telling you to do that had anything to do with the fact that your son just happens to be my son as well. Oh heaven, that sounded weird! But the point still stands. Completely unrelated! So just, you know, put away the dagger and do…something else, I guess. Whatever it is you do for fun. Not that I want you to have fun, I´m a demon and we only induce misery, but…I´m rambling, aren´t I?” 

If God had a face or hands, she would be facepalming right now. Fortunately she had neither. Aziraphale was just looking slightly confused. Henry was having the time of his life in the candle circle and kept trying to grab the flames. An ineffable gust of wind stopped him every time. 

Cain at the same time, was still smiling. It hadn´t been a particularly happy smile for a while now, but now it was the special internal-screaming kind of smile. Do you know these gay-panic memes? Picture that but without the gay. Cain had built his entire life around this. It had been his one semblance of hope to ever gain world domination. If this failed, everything would have been for naught.

Please don´t actually feel sorry for him now. Sure, his world was falling apart, but the points you have to remember are:

1) Cain is an evil person that microwaves tea and kicks puppies. He may also be absolutely useless at life and comically monologue-y, but that´s not the point.

2) It´s not as if he really needs a cure. He just wants to disprove God. He wants world domination and is for some reason convinced that he can never achieve that as long as he is cursed to wander. He is wrong about that, of course. In this time and age, it might even be an advantage. Traveling no longer needs as much time and you can´t build an empire if you only stay in one place. So really, distracting Cain by giving him something to chase after was the best thing Crowley could have done. Otherwise he might have actually tried to dominate the world instead of obsessing over petty revenge against God.

Anyway, back to what´s happening.

Cain still has a knife and an infant. His plan is in ruins and he has no reason left to go through with it. He obviously will anyway, but that is just Cain being Cain at this point. He was never a very imaginative person.

What might be interesting to know is that there was actually a prophecy about ridding yourself of the mark of Cain. It was made about 4000 years ago by a person named Nyag. Don´t worry if you have never heard that name before, he is utterly unimportant to this story and basically everything else. He used to live in a cave with some sheep and the occasional bear who didn´t ever touch the sheep or indeed Nyag himself because that guy could be absolutely terrifying if he wanted to. Picture a tiny and old but also absolutely furious human with very long, very filthy hair and a wooden cane who occasionally stopped hitting you with said cane to spout a few lines of prophecy in a language that would not be spoken for another thousand years. That bear never stood a chance. 

The point being that during one of these bouts of prophetic wisdom Nyag also started speaking about how to rid yourself of the mark´s curse while keeping its blessings and described exactly the ritual that Crowley had proposed to Cain. Another thing you need to know about Nyag was that he was to a certain degree like our dear friend Agnes Nutter. His prophecies were always correct. He too would probably have described them as nice and accurate had either word existed back then. Maybe he actually had used them during a vision at some point. Language was always difficult for people drifting through time.

Nyag, like Agnes, survived by flying under the radar. Neither heaven nor hell noticed him and so he could lead a relatively normal and happy life. It meant living in a bear-infested cave and being avoided by villagers, but Nyag was actually quite fine with that. He never had any ambitions about leaving a legacy or suchlike and instead of being burned at a stake or something ghastly like that, he died in his cave at the ripe age of 94 with a smile on his lips. No bear ever dared to touch his corpse.

Whether Crowley managed a lucky guess and accidentally told Cain the right ritual or if Nyag just witnessed their conversation in one of his visions and chose to believe him, remains a mystery. Maybe Cain´s plan would have worked after all, through some weird twist of fate.

But fact is that all I have told you in those last 4 paragraphs does in no way matter to our story. We will never know if Cain had any chance of succeeding because he will never complete the ritual. Doing that would mean killing Henry and I think you would have noticed a **Mayor Character Death** in the tags.  
But I´m digressing again. I really ought to stop doing that. You come here to read about our ineffable heroes and not to listen to me blabbing about things that are not important to this story. 

Cain was blissfully unaware of the tantalising prospect of success and had long since decided to just do this now and potentially fail and then go home, cry in the shower, eat ice cream, make tea in the microwave and kick his neighbour´s cute little kitten. That always cheered him up.

He raised the dagger and tried to laugh manically. It fell flat, but not even the best maniacal laughter could save his performance at this point.

“Dude, I just literally told you that this won´t work.”

Cain laughed again. It was becoming quite a repetitive thing at this point, but he was running out of ideas.

“I don´t care! You can´t stop me!”

It was meant to sound menacing and cruel, but actually made him sound like the stubborn, insolent child that he basically was.

“Yes, I can and I will! I won´t let you hurt them!”

“HAHAHAHAHA!!! I can´t hear you over the sound of my success!”

Yeah, he was really giving up any kind of standards at this point.

“I´m warning you! I will stop you!”

“You fool! You can’t kill me! Anything you do to me will be done to you sevenfold!”

“Yeah, I know. But who said anything about killing?”, asked Crowley and adjusted his slightly crooked sunglasses. He gave Cain a sharp smile.

“Also, there’s something you should know: Seven is an odd number.”

And then he snapped his fingers and both him and Cain turned into potted plants.

\----------

While this would seem quite anticlimactic to the casual reader, almost comical perhaps, there was actually more at stake here than one would think. Crowley was obviously counting on the act of human-to-plant transformation to be repeated at him seven times. He would turn into a plant at first, then a human, a plant again and so on. Due to seven being odd, he would end this series of transformations as a human. Or demon in this case. While that was actually quite a smart plan, he had missed one important fact.

If one were to define the act being committed against Cain as simply ‘being turned into a plant’ and repeat it seven times, Crowley would come out at the other end as being a plant that was turned into a plant seven times. 

The entire outcome of this scenario was based on a question of definition. Even God was not sure how the mark would decide.

She regarded the two outcomes. Cain would be a plant either way. Alive but harmless. That was quite a good ending for him actually, so she definitely had no reason to interfere there. Crowley was a whole other question.

Punishments from the mark could not be reversed. Not even by an angel. Crowley could either come out of this situation with no side-effects except the occasional desire to perform photosynthesis and continue leading a happy life with his husband and child or Aziraphale could be left behind alone and clutching a potted plant that now had to fill the gaping hole where his infernal husband used to be.

There really was no question of which outcome she liked better, but there was another thing to be considered here. She had already helped Crowley multiple times today. She had already skirted the line to favouring them too much. Helping them now would mean more than just favouring someone.

It would mean choosing a side.

The dices of fortune were falling and time was running out. To interfere or not to interfere?

Time to make a decision.

\----------

Imagine you were an insect stuck in this exact church. You eat leaves, there´s nothing for you in there but you just can´t find your way out. You´re hungry, frustrated, close to death. Then suddenly, blissfully two plants appear in this stuffy church. They smell so heavenly and it makes your tiny insect stomach growl. It seems like a miracle. You use all your remaining energy to drag yourself to the closest plant when that bloody thing suddenly turns into a person, and a plant, and a person. And finally settles on a person. You don´t eat people. But you are hungry. There´s still a second plant nearby but you already used all your energy to get to this one that was then cruelly taken from you again. It´s over you´re doomed. Horrible, right?

Thankfully, there were currently no insects stuck in that church. Small mercies. There were however a not exactly human child, an angel, a potted plant and a demon battling the desire to grow out of the hole in the wall and perform photosynthesis.

Maybe staying a potted plant forever would have been the better outcome. It would spare him the agony of explaining this whole mess to Aziraphale.

Crowley sighed and snapped his fingers. The chains around the angel fell away without resistance. Satanic signs may stop angels, but they do in no way hinder a demon. 

Aziraphale got up, walked over to Henry and held him to his chest protectively. His eyes never left Crowley. The distrust stung but was probably fair. He really had messed this one up, hadn´t he?

Right, time to explain this. 

“Angel, listen to me. I´m really sorry about…you know. I didn´t mean it. You know I didn’t mean it. It was just…I heard this prophecy and I thought that I knew what it meant, but I really didn’t and then I messed everything up. I just thought that it was about you and that one of you had to die and I couldn´t take that. I can´t live without you, angel. But truth is I can´t live without Henry either and I never would have hurt him but I just didn´t know what to do and I panicked and then I ran out instead of explaining and then God of all people threw a fucking sign at me and there was actually a fortune cookie involved too and I talked to Anathema and apparently this also has something to do with some gay church guy who was really big in the press a few years ago? No idea what that was about. And then there was that weird guy with that dog in the park and I punched a tree and…”

Aziraphale was looking increasingly confused. That was definitely a step up from the blatant distrust he had shown only a minute ago, but also not what Crowley was going for. Oh someone, he was rambling again, wasn´t he. He was making all of this even worse. The dog guy? Seriously? How was he even important to this story? I mean, his dog had been kind of weird, but also totally inconsequential to the point you´re trying to get across? He should probably wrap this up before he rambled even more and made this even worse. Ripping the band aid of quickly an all that.

“So what I’m really trying to say here, angel, is that I’m sorry. I can only hope that you will forgive me, but I want you to know that you are in no way obligated to.”

There was silence for a few moments. 

Crowley carefully peaked up at Aziraphale’s face to gauge his reaction. 

Were those tears? They looked like tears. But were they good tears or bad tears? Social cues were so confusing sometimes.

Then Aziraphale took a deep and definitely very tearful breath, reached out and punched Crowley. Hard.

It was only his arm that was hit, but with all that angelic strength it still hurt.

Before Crowley could react to this, he found himself enveloped in the tightest hug you can imagine.

Well, this was sending mixed messages. He also couldn’t breathe. Luckily demons don’t have to or this situation would have been really awkward.

What did this mean now? _I’m still mad at you but I also love and forgive you_? Social cues really weren’t his strength.

That was okay though. He just had to play it as cool as he looked now. He would apologise some more and then gently steer the conversation to what the someone was going on.

“So what does this mean now?”, Crowley blurted out and immediately went beet-red. 

Very eloquent. Totally the best way to enquire if your amazing husband will forgive you for being an evil train wreck of a demon.

“For...you know...us”, he managed to stammer out.

Aziraphale just chuckled quietly. There was a lot to unpack here, but they had time.

“Let´s go home, darling.”

He turned to the absolutely trashed door and was just about to ask Crowley where he had parked the car (hopefully not in a disabled spot again) when his eyes fell onto the wrecked Bentley.

Oh dear.

“Oh, Crowley! Your poor car! I´m dreadfully sorry, my dear! I don´t know if a few miracles will be able to fix this.”

Crowley too turned back to the Bentley and felt a pang of loss in what he would have called his cold, rotten heart that was actually quite soft and sweet and maybe a tiny bit _nice_. Then he looked back at his angel and the pain lessened slightly. He sighed and gave a half-shrug.

“It´s fine, angel”, he said. “You´re more important than the Bentley.”

Aziraphale´s answering smile shone brighter than any star and was absolutely worth it. Even if the demon didn´t know it yet, he had just been forgiven.

They took the bus home. Together.


	16. Happy Endings

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Merry Christmas to all of you that celebrate it and a lovely day to everyone else!

Let us end this story on a happier, more domestic note.

There have been misunderstandings and arguments and problems to overcome, but at the end of the day, all that really matters is being with the people we love.  
Let´s take another look at our little family of three. They have been through a lot in those past few days, but they still love each other and as long as there´s love, there´s hope. Hope for better days. Hope to be forgiven.

And those better days are now. 

Picture a father and his son. A happy little family. The husband is in the next room, baking cake or cooking dinner. A perfect little picture of domesticity.

Just that none of these people happen to be very human and that one of them is currently yelling at their house plants. Well, some people have interesting hobbies.

Of course, Crowley wasn´t using any actual swearwords. There were celestial hybrid toddlers present. That did however not stop him from absolutely verbally destroying those plants. The fact that one of them used to be an almost-human being that had tried to kill his son and husband did nothing to soothe his vigour. Quite the contrary actually. 

Like I said, a perfect little picture of maybe not exactly ordinary but still happy domesticity.

This picture was only interrupted when Henry, during one of Crowley´s especially intense tirades about leaf spots, toddled up to his father, softly punched his leg to get his attention and then insulted him with an particularly bad word in Enochian that shall not be repeated here, only to toddle back of, leaving his demonic parent absolutely stunned.

The swearing was, in of itself, not very surprising. One tends to pick up certain words when living with a literal demon after all. The fact was though, that the person responsible for teaching Henry Enochian and the only one that really used it around the house had and would always be Aziraphale. And that would mean…

Crowley smiled.

“Oh, I´m never gonna let him live that down!”

The very beautiful but also very terrified plants were immediately forgotten and the demon Crowley stormed out of the room in search of his husband.

“Hey, angel!”, he yelled. “You´re never going to guess what Henry just said to me!”

Ah, yes. To love is to tease.

After Crowley was gone and the room was silent once more, something else happened. No one will ever be able to prove that it actually happened, she made sure of that, but I’m telling you that it did and you’ll just have to believe me.

A tiny tendril of light condensed out of the empty air in the room and, as if that wasn’t weird enough, the only thing it did was slap the plant that had once been the not-really-human known as Cain on its withered leaves before dissolving once more.

As the keen reader might have guessed, this light was nothing other than God herself. Maybe her act had been childish, but it was the acting that counted. The years of apathy were over.

It looked like she had finally chosen a side.

Did that mean that she would always do that now? That all wars would be ended and all problems solved? No, of course it didn’t.

Would anyone really want to live in a world where God could be against you? 

No, she wouldn’t do that. Fairness was essential, especially when you happened to be an omnipotent interdimensional being. But kindness was important as well and maybe she would show a little more of that again.

She wouldn’t solve humanities problems for them, that was still their job, but she could help a little. Humanity could be destroyed by things like war and disease and climate change, but they could also grow. Nothing stimulated genius and innovation and bravery more than obstacles.

But maybe she could save a few more people, maybe send a few more bright ideas or give them just a little more time to figure themselves out.

Maybe it wouldn’t really change anything, but it was a start.

Sometimes little things can change the world. You just have to keep trying.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh, well. Looks like that´s the end of this one. It´s actually the first long story I have ever posted here and I could never have done it alone.
> 
> Thank you to walking_contradiction42 who always listened to my weird ideas and helped me make them turn into an actual story.  
> Thank you to my lovely beta Emily who always read this and told me that it wasn´t horrible. I really needed that.  
> And of course thank you to all of you who read this or commented or left kudos. This wouldn´t exist without all of you.  
> Thank you to elf_on_the_shelf in particular. Thank you for your consistent support and kind words.   
> I love all of you.


	17. Hair dye

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is just something I had to think of when I wrote dye instead of die in the prophecy. Has no real connection to the story, but maybe you like it.
> 
> Set during chapter 14.

The situation is this: A few blocks away, Crowley is breaking every speed limit known to man to get to his husband. Said husband however believes that he isn´t coming and is quite close to giving up. Enter Cain. Our antagonist. With him he brings the child, Henry, a book, a pair of silver scissors and a mysterious unmarked bottle. Combine this with the ominous candle circle that is already in the church and I think we all know where this is going. Aziraphale is tied up with magical chains and unable to stop it. Crowley is still too far away to do anything but desperately trying to stop it. Cain is there but has absolutely no interest in stopping. Henry is a toddler. Also there´s God. God, being God, is of course everywhere, but there was quite a lot of her here right now. However, she is not important for the events currently unfolding. Yet.

All seems hopeless. Help is on the way but currently running late. Stalling would be an option, but since Aziraphale doesn´t actually know that anyone´s coming, he has no reason to try. There´s only one thing that can save our heroes now:

_A complete and utter misunderstanding_

A bottle, a book and ominous candle circles don´t spell satanic ritual quite yet. There´s a lot of things you can use candle circles for. They have excellent light distribution for one. Quite useful when you´ve just broken into a church and have no idea how to operate the lighting system.

And what about the book, bottle and the scissors, you ask? Well, there´s a perfectly reasonable explanation for these as well. Let´s take a closer look at the book together. It´s not exactly the kind of book you expect satanic rituals to be written in. It´s way too knew for one and the picture of young, attractive people with amazing hair is also quite confusing. Upon closer inspection, this appears to be a book on hair styling. 

The scissors fit quite well into this new picture that is still forming and the bottle would, if you cared to open it, be revealed to contain not blood or wine but red hair dye.

_Mixed blood sharl ryse and the restless man will dye_

What appeared to be a funny quirk of Agnes´ Elizabethan spelling is getting a much more literal meaning.

“Angel Aziraphale!”, Cain exclaimed dramatically.

(This may be an alternate chapter, but it´s also a crack chapter and the characterisation of Cain being an absolutely over-the-top performer fits into this very well.)

“You have married the demon Crowley, have you not? Very nice hair that one. I quite like it. And I quite like you too. So as a belated wedding present, I will give you _matching hair styles_!!!!”

The lightning flickered dramatically on his cue and a sound that was probably meant to be thunder but sounded much more like a broken washing machine grated through the church´s speakers.

Okay, maybe Cain _did_ know how to operate the church´s sound and lighting systems and had simply decided to use them for something more important than being able to bloody see while cutting someone´s hair. That of course being dramatic effect.

Despite his performance actually going more or less according to plan so far, Aziraphale seemed utterly unimpressed.

“Did you seriously kidnap me and my son just to give me a new hair style?!”

Cain only chuckled and tried to twirl the scissors and the dye bottle around his fingers dramatically. He wasn´t very good at it. The bottle fell to the ground, the lid broke off and red dye spilled all over the ground and leaked into Aziraphale´s wonderful shoes. That didn´t phase Cain. It was all part of the performance.

“No, you fool!”, he intoned dramatically in a voice that failed miserably at being dramatic. “I kidnapped you and your son to give _both of you_ a stylish new hairstyle!!!”

He cackled manically (also keeping this characteristic) and set to work. Aziraphale´s pleading cries that his hair was absolutely fine thank you very much fell on deaf ears.

(This was very evil of Cain. He is still evil in this chapter. Just different evil. Nobody touches those angel´s beautiful blonde curls.) 

When Crowley did finally come and crash his car through the wall, he was met with an entirely different sight.

No villainous monologue had come to their aid this time and Cain´s ghastly work was already done.

“Hello, dear”, sighed the angel Aziraphale who now had a less than stylish hair cut that only vaguely resembled Crowley´s. Red hair dye was smudged all over his face and had soaked the top of his very stylish waist coat. It was a miracle that any of it had managed to land in his hair at all.

There was definitely a very good reason why Cain hadn´t become a barber.

Said villain was currently extending his villainous scheme to Henry.

Toddlers don´t really have a lot of hair, so there was not really anything to cut into a new, stylish shape. The only thing left to do was dye it red. Cain however was not a complete monster, would never make tea in the microwave and was very conscious of the effects the toxins in hair dye could have on a child. He had dutifully chosen a more natural alternative and was currently trying to dye his hair with mashed tomatoes. It wasn´t working very well.

Henry was having the time of his life.

Crowley on the other hand had no idea how to react to this. He had expected this to be a daring rescue from an evil villain, not a crazed wannabe barber who also happened to be immortal, the first criminal and the biological father of their son.

He didn’t know what to say. So, as a demon, he opted for swearing.

“What the-!”

(Psst! Celestial hybrid toddlers are present!)


End file.
